Kevin Systrom is one of the co-founders of Instagram. He remained with the company when the photo-sharing network was acquired by Facebook. He has spent a few years at the company but his recent exit took many by surprise. It came amid reports that the Instagram co-founders were at odds with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about their vision for the platform going forward. Systrom has addressed his exit for the company for the first time and said that there are “no hard feelings at all.”
Speaking at the Wired 25 conference, Systrom didn’t address reports about tensions with Facebook but hinted as much. “When you leave anything, there are obviously reasons for leaving,” he said, adding that “No one ever leaves a job because everything’s awesome, right? Work’s hard.”
Systrom did point out that he and his co-founder Mike Krieger remained at Instagram for six years after the company was sold to Facebook for $1 billion. That’s longer than most entrepreneurs stay after selling their startups.
Systrom had said in his farewell post that he would be working on a new project. He also mentioned that it’s likely that the duo that co-founded Instagram would work on this project together but didn’t provide any time frame for when that would happen.
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