♪ emily: it is one of the fastest-growing apps the world has ever seen, revolutionizing the way we express ourselves in a single photo. kevin system turned on a job in college, showed a desk with jack dorsey as an intern with what became twitter and then watched instagram as we know it. just two years later, he reunited with zuckerberg to make silicon valley history, green to sell instagram to facebook for $1 billion. the company had just 13 employees and 30 million users.

today, over half a billion people on the planet use instagram every month sharing more than 95 million photos and videos a day. joining me today, instagram cofounder kevin system. joiningu so much for us. kevin: thank you for having me. emily: you were born in massachusetts. kevin: home of the panthers. emily: what kind of kid were you? kevin: nerdy. i do not know. i was relieved to cross-country running. emily: you were on the lacrosse team? kevin: the third lacrosse team. i was not a jock. emily: 20 to become interested in technology? kevin: i just play video games all the time on the computer. i learned you could create your own levels, and the programming and then i took classes in school and i wanted to make my

own games, something that really inspired me and i loved it. importantly, photography, you also got involved in photography. kevin: it was hard to find me at a young age without a camera in my hands, whether it was my dad's camera, because you know those packs of film, i would go through them and they were not cheat but i love taking photos. at least my family has a rich visual history. i studied in florence in college and just sat in the dark room developing photos and that is right learned about filtering. you could add these chemicals to the path, the developing bath that would change the colors of the photos. i brought that along with me to instagram. emily: that is for you learned about square photos/ ? -- my my fraternity photography teacher took my nice camera out of my hands and i learned to love it. it was easy to take good photos and square format. stanford, iyou read

heard you had an offer to drop out for facebook? kevin: there was a girl involved and i did not want to leave school. also, i actually, it is amazing talking to a lot of my mentors of the time that said, facebook go away,and it will and to this day i think about that decision. thetually think it was right decision. i love finishing stanford and i loved what i learned of their. re. when i think about it, think about how many technologies, about the people doubt first. a lot of people thought instagram would not work in the first two years, still do not think it will work sometimes, kind of hard to refute at this point but you have to keep going. emily: he went on to google, and turned with a company that became twitter, working with evan williams. what was that like? kevin: when i showed up my first day of work, i got this puzzled

look and they said, that is right, we hired an intern, but they were super nice to me. honestly, without that experience i did not think of it have the same passion for social media that i do today. jack is super creative and it also mention here as well as a it was great to meet them and learn from them early on. emily: what did you learn? kevin: number one, sometimes your first idea does not work out. it became twitter but i remember clearly it did not quite work and then keeping in touch with jack and evan as they may be transitioned into realizing that often when you are a company, you need to prevent into something else. instagram had a similar history. we were working on a game called bourbon that turned into instagram. emily: your first instagram photo was of your girlfriends for but maybe it was even the first filter that had been more consequential. kevin: had i known that was

going to be first photo and on instagram and it would get to where five hundred thousand people are using it monthly, would've tried a little bit harder. i girlfriend at the time is now my wife and she told me, i'm not going to post photos unless i can make them look great so you should probably add filters. ro which was the first filter we ever created and i added it and i took a photo of her foot and a stray dog and i posted it as a test and it lived on forever. emily: how quickly did it become something that you realized could be not just big but really big? ms. nooyi: i may have been a little bit optimistic, but the second we launched, there is something new and different. i had work to other companies that have struggled to get 100 people to sign up in a day and at that first morning, that first day we had 25,000 people sign up and i remember my eyes were wide open because i never seen a service rather quickly and day one.

we kind of had lightning in a poll and it was our job to capture it and to continue to work on it, not screw it up and to this day we think about that as our job, just keep it going, it has a life of its own, do not get in the way, make it awesome. emily: are you afraid enough of snapchat? ♪

♪ momenttell me about the or the transition where you began to contemplate selling the

company or became more open to the idea of selling the company? kevin: this was four years ago, so we were in a different place, 13 people, four years younger, did not have nearly as much experience as a ceo but i look back at the decision to sell to ros asok, i think the p we got to pick up with a juggernaut of a company that understands how to grow, how devoted business, has one of the best, if not the best business management team and technology. that was really the hope in the dream and like most acquisitions do not work out that way. you can look over the past years how many acquisitions have sellingnder abruptly because of culture clashes, changes in vision and whatever, misalignment. we have been it what to do this for over four years and that is what is awesome about that decision. it came true. i think we got a little lucky,

meaning not many people get to get to this point, but we also worked very hard. emily: at the time you were contemplating raising money, talking to twitter about selling to them and then mark zuckerberg came into the picture. what happened? kevin: the acquisition happened quickly. we decided it was the right thing to do and closed over the weekend, easter weekend. i remember being at his house and has been like, let's do this. we are aligned, lawyers for everywhere and we were signing documents and figuring this out and that it was a whirlwind because i think we were in a kind of no man's land for six to nine months figuring out whether the deal would go through, and once a day we were able to partner and immediately devalue became clear because we got together, were able to fix the infrastructure. every day that went by we were struggling to keep the site up, struggling under our own growth. we were able to figure out spam really quickly. we were having this giant spam attack and we started using

their tools immediately. a lot of those things happen immediately after the acquisition and just help the company grow and skyrocket. emily: why not twitter? kevin: i think there were a lot of companies google, others so are interested in instagram. facebook was the one that took it seriously and i think mark acted very quickly and decisively. at the same time, you look at the parenting now and it feels native emily:. emily:google was interested? company think every was. i do not think it was google specifically but that companies were interested in what instagram was up to. we were a bit of an anomaly because people would see 13 people but at the same time we had all of this growth and people were kind of like, they did not get why those things could be true at the same time. i think a lot of people wrote off photos. no one knew how important photos would be for the future of social media and expression.

if you look at the way people express themselves, it is not through just chat but through photos and sending them to each other. no one quite understood that was the revolution instagram was about to embark on. you foracebook but about $1 billion and then citigroup but did as $35 billion. the chamber thing, what did i just do? kevin: no, no. i think every entrepreneur measures value on impact, or i hope you would. if you talk to mark him he giveaway 95% of his wealth or did we are not in this game to make money but to change the world. if you talk to entrepreneurs that matter, elon, the measure value based on, what did we just do for the world? did we create something that that not exist before, unlock some sort of value? that is will be focus on every day. emily: when mark zuckerberg bought his company, he plays she would let you work independently. kevin: she has been true to his

word and then sometime. his interaction with this company is through meetings with me. i have learned a tremendous amount from him about our transition to a more global community, about strategy. he is one of the most interesting strategic long-term thinkers i have ever met. think about having the best board member in the world. imagine how many companies would want mark zuckerberg on their board. that is what we get. it is independent but you also get amazing guidance and counsel from someone that has been able to build a tremendous company. i think the transition to advertising was an interesting one. i was of the belief that if we had a few more advertisers they would be higher quality and it turned out to be the opposite. if you have more advertisers and are able to bring in an entire ecosystem where they compete against each other, you actually get higher-quality advertisements. that is something i did not realize at the time. i remember him saying he felt the same way but it turns out there's another thing. i was able to learn a lot.

emily: dimension you meet with mark and brendan. how do you see instagram taking advantage of some of the more futuristic things facebook is working on like virtual reality? make: if our vision is to you feel you can travel anywhere in the world and experience whatever's happening, imagine a day when you can that on a headset and be at a coldplay concert, seeing something happen like a big protest or right anywhere in the world, or something as simple as a friend's wedding. that is the experience we would love to create and the virtual reality will play a critical role in seeing a vision come true. emily: how about artificial intelligence? kevin: that is what powers advertising. emily: do you see more of it? kevin: for sure. one thing i have learned is the more personalization you have, if we can have an experience that caters to you, you the individual, if we know your

interest in what you engage with, we can use machine learning and artificial intelligence to make a much, much better experience for you on instagram. emily: what about e-commerce? kevin: i am really excited about the future of e-commerce on instagram where we start and where we end up are two different places. we effectively have a buy button it just is not complete the transaction on instagram. what we are starting is letting advertisers get to their audience, promote their own products or post and then basically from there, they take action on the advertisers website. if we can make that more seamless in the future, of course we will. we are just starting to walk before we run. emily: who do you see as a petition? kevin: we as consumers only have a limited amount of time to pull out our phones and do something, so anyone competing for time. emily: one employee told us they are concerned facebook and instagram are not more scared of snapchat.

are you afraid enough of snapchat? kevin: i do not think it is our job to be afraid is supposed to understanding what is happening in the world. i think we are competing for time and eyeballs, etc. getting to 500 million users around the world is a big feat. 300 million people are daily actives opening up instagram every single day, 21 minutes a day, that is a big feat. we are not sitting happy thinking that is going to last forever and we need to keep innovating in introducing products. emily: harassment is a problem across social media. attendedr reportedly suicide after reading comments on instagram. do you think instagram needs to take a harder line? kevin: we take every report of abuse or harassment very seriously. we provide tools for our public figures to moderate the comments and something we're focusing a lot on over the next year. it is unacceptable for that to

exist on any platform and we are going to be a platform that takes it seriously. logo, you redesigned your which some people do not like. ♪

emily: there was a lot of drama when you hire twitter's head of product, given all of the struggles they are going through. you are a product focus ceo.

how much impact can a head of product have when you are the designer? kevin: product management is different than project strategy. a building product is much more of a racial, much more like the guts of the machine. once you have an idea, how do you get it to become a reality and that is something i think kevin brings amazing expertise. he has done it before, seen it at scale and i do not like to say i make a product manager. i think the team will attest, but i left thinking strategically. kevin's combine personality and expertise in mind, not only do you get to kevins but you also get a great pair that is like a human yang of the process. emily: i notice you have a very simple twitter handle. do you think twitter can turn itself around? do you think it can resolve a gross? growth?e celebrate

kevin: i think it is amazing company. every company is going to his speed bumps. it happens. it happened at instagram, facebook and it is all about how you get out of that. that is a hard question to answer and i respect a lot of what they have done. emily: you mentioned every day gets more complicated but how much of instagram's success has been a focus to simplicity? kevin: i think that is the complex part of instagram. it is easy to let a product get bloated to say to every employee, go work on whatever you want and we will see what sticks. for you know it, you have a product that is all over the place, not a singular voice and that itself is complex. j to get something to be simple if be straightforward, even though it has tremendous amounts of complexity behind the scenes, that is the hardest part of any ceo's job, actually saying no more than you say yes. emily: what are some features

that you ponder, through around that you ultimately said no? kevin: we had a lot of people asking for sponsored fixtures -- filters. there was some of the wanted a teeth whitening filter. that is a funny example, but it makes sense because, we have filters, we should probably use sponsor versions but we focus on simplicity and doing the right thing which is to not make them , but focus on what people love most about them. there are decisions like that everyday that are easy, you can make a few bucks by doing them by the end up adding complexity to the product and it is not add a lot to your bottom line. emily: you redesigned your logo, which some people do not like. kevin: really? emily: some call that a travesty. what did you learn from that? kevin: i knew it would be a difficult change. there is not a single company i have seen whether you are starbucks, cap, that has changed their logo and it has been easy. there is not a single company.

i think the question is, how much more can be put into it before you were there, how much salt you have? what we wanted to do was to give people an idea that we were not just about photography, more general than that but about creativity, thus the colors and simplicity. -- we wanted thing something that would look great on a phone, t-shirt, billboard, anyway. the current logo would not do that. as much as i love it because i have a heavy hand in designing it, the current when i did not have a heavy hand except helping the team along. we have an amazing design team that did an awesome presentation about evolution of brands throughout time and every brand goes from being complex to simpler, simpler, simpler to iconic. you can do that when apple, at&t, you name it, the big brands do this. we just kept if you parts. that is ok because it is going to be hard. i learned it is hard.

i also learned that is going to be ok. emily: how did the timeline workout? is it working the way you hoped? kevin: it is working to way be hoped. engagement is up because of it. it means people are liking a stronger and more and have more feedback on their post, more feedback. the good news about this feed is unlike what people believe, it is not actually, not chronological but fairly chronological. it just takes the stuff you have not seen and reorders it because you see the best of the top. people miss more than 70% of their feet and that is ok with us. emily: you have been traveling around the world at fashion shows and major events, what has the last year been like for you personally? kevin: i would not say that the nerd in high school be at a fashion show. it still feels weird.

i go to these things because i am a representative of the brand instagram and i believe by having relationships with people in these different industries, or doingt is the pope fashion dinners with an a mentor, those things, they could not be more different but they are both extremely important communities on instagram. emily: he personally on board the pope. what was that like? kevin: really inspirational. there are not many moments in life when you think, why am i here? but also, when it happens you realize, i'm going to remember this moment for my entire life, when you realize you can onboard someone that will go down in the history books for hundreds if not thousands of years and that they are choosing your product to connect with the people they care most about their message. that is awesome. emily: silicon valley is accused and fullarrogant of overnight billionaires, but

if anyone comes close to that story, it is you. you may want to get dollars, not overnight, but you made a lot of money. how have you adjusted to that personally? know, it is not an easy answer because i'm not sure there is any guide book for it. what you begin to realize is money matters in the sense that it puts a roof over your head and it feeds you and your family, but beyond that, what matters most is your impact on the world, your relationships with people your family, friends. what you realize is a lot of people work their entire lives to make more money when really what you should be aimed at is, what is your impact on the world? emily: how have you changed? to learn ave had lot. some of that did not manage a single person six years ago, now we have a big team of 500 people. that makes you change fairly quickly. you learn a lot of patience, how to communicate more clearly. you learn to have resolved

through tough situations, not just personal situations but company situations. you learn to ride the bumps more easily. emily: you are 32 years old. do you ever want to start something new? kevin: totally. and some ways, whether it is lly or helping other people start businesses. i do angel investing. as there are a lot of ways of having impacts without starting another company. emily: what is your single piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? kevin: p1 piece of advice i got was to challenge -- followed by passion i turned on a lot of jobs. coming out of stanford and i did what i love. emily: cofounder and ceo of instagram. thank you so much. kevin: this was great. ♪

♪ 10:00 a.m. int singapore, 1:00 p.m. in sydney, 9:00 p.m. in new york. i am rishaad salamat. this is "bloomberg markets: asia." ♪ rishaad: japanese shares rising as the tumbling yen gives exporters are left. the asia-pacific market gaining. forave the slide continuing emerging-market currencies, with

heading for a low, prompting speculation around the reserve bank ticket into the market. finds 80% support for the impeachment of south korea's president. jakarta joining what is going on. we have a look at the markets, and what have we got? as atte: more weakness jakarta comes online, down .6% as the indonesian currency touches a june low. that is having huge ramifications in terms of emerging-market currencies. you are generally saying weakness in emerging markets. hong kong down .4% in early trade, but some upside from casinos. a little bit of weakness dragging the index down.