Who is Mike Krieger?
Mike Krieger is a Brazilian-American entrepreneur and software engineer best known as the co-founder and CTO of Instagram, the photo and video sharing app with over 1 billion monthly active users.
Krieger was born on March 4, 1983 in São Paulo, Brazil. From an early age, he was interested in technology and coding. He attended Stanford University, earning a BS in Symbolic Systems. After graduating in 2005, he worked as a user experience designer and engineer at the startup Meebo.
In 2010, Krieger reconnected with his Stanford friend Kevin Systrom, who had an idea for a mobile check-in app called Burbn that included photo-sharing features. The pair decided to spin off the photo functionality into a separate app focused solely on photos. Krieger built the initial prototype for what would become Instagram.
As Instagram‘s userbase exploded, Facebook acquired the app in 2012 for $1 billion. Krieger‘s roughly 10% stake earned him an estimated $100 million from the deal. He stayed on as CTO, leading an engineering team that grew from just a handful to several hundred people responsible for scaling Instagram‘s technology globally.
In 2018, Krieger and Systrom resigned from leadership roles at Instagram to explore new projects, while still remaining with the company. Outside of technology, Krieger is an art lover and collector, as well as an aviation enthusiast.
Early Life and Background in Brazil
Mike Krieger was born on March 4, 1983 in São Paulo, Brazil to Marcia and Paulo Krieger. As a child, Krieger developed a deep fascination with computers and technology. He spent hours tinkering with his family‘s computer and teaching himself coding by creating programs and video games.
Even from a young age, Krieger demonstrated strong persistence when tackling difficult programming problems. He shared an early memory of working for two straight weeks trying to create a helicopter simulation program, refusing to give up until he got the physics right.
Beyond technology, Krieger also pursued creative interests like graphic design and filmmaking. He made movies and animations using software tools like Flash. This combination of technical and creative inclinations would serve him well later in envisioning new types of user experiences.
As a high school student, Krieger felt frustrated with the education system in Brazil, which he saw as too focused on rote memorization. Eager to study computer science and technology more deeply, he made the decision to apply to universities in the United States. He was accepted to five American colleges, ultimately choosing to attend Stanford University.
Education at Stanford Sets Path for Instagram Co-Founding
Krieger excelled in his studies at Stanford. Although he originally planned to major in computer science, he became fascinated by a relatively new interdisciplinary program called Symbolic Systems. Covering a mix of computer science, psychology, linguistics, mathematics and philosophy, it focused on using computational techniques to analyze real-world phenomena.
The Symbolic Systems program ended up being a perfect fit for Krieger‘s interests. It directly informed his ability to design useful, intuitive user experiences grounded in analyzing how people interact with technology.
Krieger supplemented his coursework by serving as an oral communications tutor and an advising fellow for the Symbolic Systems department. He graduated in 2005 with a BS degree in Symbolic Systems, complemented by practical experience gained in summer software engineering internships at Microsoft and Foxmarks.
As he neared graduation, Krieger applied for and was selected as one of twelve students for the exclusive Mayfield Fellows Program, a high-tech entrepreneurship program at Stanford meant to foster promising startup founders. This put him into close contact with venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road and some of Silicon Valley‘s most successful entrepreneurs.
The network Krieger built at Stanford would become essential as he began exploring startup ideas a few years later. It was also at Stanford that Krieger first met fellow student Kevin Systrom, who would later become his Instagram co-founder.
Early Career Experiences Prep Skills for Instagram
Prior to teaming up with Systrom on Instagram, Krieger accrued valuable work experience in software engineering roles at tech companies including Meebo, Microsoft and Foxmarks:
Microsoft (Summer 2004) – As a program manager intern on the PowerPoint team, Krieger worked on user studies and built features to incorporate multimedia content into slide presentations. He had to quickly get up to speed on PowerPoint‘s mature, complex codebase.
Foxmarks (Summer 2005) – Krieger served as a product development intern at this early web bookmarking startup. The role exposed him to the lean approach of iterating quickly based on user feedback that is common at early-stage startups.
Meebo (March 2007 – July 2010) – After Stanford, Krieger spent over 3 years as a UI engineer at the social messaging startup Meebo. He designed, built and tested numerous new product features targeted at consumers and publishers. His work on innovative data visualization tools to analyze user engagement patterns informed his later approach to product analytics at Instagram.
These experiences let Krieger hone his technical talents while exposed to different product design philosophies. At Microsoft, he came to appreciate the meticulous planning required for enterprise-scale software. Startups like Foxmarks and Meebo showed him the thrill of rapidly trying out new ideas. This combination would enable him to complement and balance his future co-founder Systrom‘s strengths as they developed and scaled Instagram.
The Founding Story of Instagram
Krieger and Systrom first came up with the idea for Instagram while working on another startup idea called Burbn. Burbn was a mobile check-in app similar to Foursquare but included features for sharing locations, plans and photos.
The initial Burbn prototype built by Systrom used HTML5 for the check-in portion but lacked photo uploading capabilities. Since Krieger had more front-end development experience, Systrom asked him to build out the early photo functionality, which used a cutting-edge combination of HTML5, CSS filters and touch-optimized interfaces when launched in early 2010.
While testing Burbn with friends, Systrom noticed they were spending most of their time not checking in locations but using the photo filters to enhance their images. At the time, photo sharing services like Facebook and Flickr were mainly focused on desktop use and lacked creative tools optimized for mobile.
Sensing mobile photography becoming the next big wave, Krieger and Systrom made a pivot: they decided to take just the photo filtering and sharing portion of Burbn into a separate iPhone app called Instagram. The name fused the concepts of instant cameras and sharing instantly on the go.
Krieger built out the initial Instagram iOS prototype in Objective-C leveraging Apple‘s camera and GPU APIs. The app allowed seamless photo capture, the application of stylish filters with touch controls, and social sharing features to follow friends and see their photos in a stream.
Instagram launched exclusively on iOS in October 2010. Growth was steady but relatively slow for the first couple months until it hit hockey stick growth in early 2011. Instagram for Android launched a year later, further fueling its hypergrowth.
Within 15 months of launch, Instagram had 15 million users. By April 2012 when Facebook bought the startup for $1 billion, it had 30 million users and thousands joining daily.
Krieger Leads Engineering Team Through Period of Hypergrowth
As Instagram‘s user base exploded, Krieger had to rapidly scale up the fledgling company‘s infrastructure. He led an engineering team that ballooned from just a handful initially to over 40 employees at the time of the Facebook acquisition.
Managing Instagram‘s runaway growth was extremely challenging technically. Krieger has compared repeatedly doubling capacity to changing engines on an airplane in mid-flight. He focused obsessively on site stability and uptime as loads increased exponentially.
Under Krieger‘s CTO leadership, the engineering team migrated backend infrastructure through several re-architectings: first to scale beyond their initial barebones cloud hosting, then eventually onto Facebook‘s own datacenters and content delivery network post-acquisition. Frontend performance also required constant optimization, like reducing photos‘ file sizes without sacrificing visual quality.
On top of infrastructure, Krieger also managed the engineering team‘s ballooning headcount and sprawling priorities. He implemented Agile software methodologies with things like daily standups and continuous deployment cycles.
Engineering excellence became a cultural pillar. In a 2016 Quora post, early Instagram engineer Rick Branson reflected on Krieger‘s technical leadership style:
"Mike was easily the best manager I‘ve ever had. He always sought to understand an issue deeply, even code-level details…He worked to instill a culture based on ownership, giving people agency rather than micromanaging."
Even after the Facebook acquisition, Krieger stayed on leading product development and technology teams as Instagram grew into a global phenomenon with over 1 billion monthly users. By the time he left, hundreds of engineers reported up to Instagram‘s CTO.
$100 Million from the Facebook Acquisition
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had tried unsuccessfully to buy Instagram in 2011 as part of his preemptive strategy for acquiring potential competitive threats. Those talks fell through after Instagram raised money from top-tier VC firms like Benchmark.
In early 2012, with Instagram‘s growth showing no signs of slowing, Zuckerberg reconnected with Systrom and negotiations heated up. A deal for $1 billion was formally announced in April 2012.
Krieger himself owned roughly 10% of Instagram at the time of acquisition. This meant his personal stake was instantly worth around $100 million when the deal closed.
For Krieger, the massive payday represented life-changing money that has afforded him the freedom pursue other creative passions. But in interviews, he has articulated that moving onto the next big project quickly became more motivating than the money itself.
In an investor Q&A, Krieger explained how he handled coming into sudden wealth at a relatively young age:
"I spent very little time thinking about the money and more time thinking about ensuring myself and people I care about are happy & healthy."
Departure from Instagram Leadership
For six and a half years after the Facebook sale, Krieger continued leading Instagram‘s product and engineering teams along with CEO Kevin Systrom. But in September 2018, the pair announced they would be stepping down, while still remaining involved as advisors.
In Systrom‘s departure meetings, he reportedly cited decreasing autonomy over decision making under Facebook leadership as a key reason. With Zuckerberg exerting more control, he felt they could no longer manage Instagram‘s innovation culture the way they wanted.
Krieger echoed similar sentiments about their decision in an interview, suggesting they‘d succeeded in getting the company to a stable, self-sustaining place organizationally.
“Growing Instagram from 0 to 1000 people was very hard but very straightforward operationally. To get from 1000 to today took an unbelievable team I’m very proud to have worked with. That makes it easier to step away.”
While no longer involved in Instagram‘s day-to-day operations, Krieger continues to cheer on and support the company‘s progress from the outside.
Personal Life Outside Technology
Outside his high-profile career, Krieger leads a relatively lowkey life centered on family, creative pastimes and global travel adventures.
He met his wife Kaitlyn Trigger in 2010 at a mutual friend‘s party while he was still working at Meebo. They dated for five years before Krieger proposed during a hike overlooking Horseshoe Bend in Arizona.
Close friends and family attended their wedding in December 2015 at a boutique hotel resort in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In interviews, Krieger credits his wife, who works as a product lead in fintech, for supporting him during intense periods focusing on Instagram without much life balance.
In terms of hobbies, Krieger is an avid collector of Southwestern and Native American art and artifacts from his travels in that region. As a plane owner and enthusiast pilot certified to fly single-engine aircraft, he indulges his sense of exploration and wanderlust through piloting adventures across North and South America.
While no longer in the public eye as much post-Instagram, Krieger maintains an active presence supporting philanthropic foundations. He contributed $100k as an early donor to the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit addressing problematic impacts of technology. Alongside his wife Kaitlyn, he also founded Future Justice Fund to improve US criminal justice reform through initiatives like policy advocacy, litigation and storytelling.
Principles for Entrepreneurs and Innovators
Despite his early, outsized success, Krieger believes his journey still lies closer to the beginning than the end. Friends describe him as humble, authentic and very intentional about how he spends his time in this phase of reinventing himself after Instagram.
Distilling hard-won lessons through Burbn, Instagram and beyond, Krieger often shares advice for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to build bold new products:
Laser focus on solving people‘s needs – Krieger stresses relentlessly focusing on understanding users‘ problems to build solutions uniquely matched to real desires—instead of cramming disparate feature checks.
Embrace constraints – Especially early on, embracing tight limits in time, money and scope prevents overbuilding. Quick sprints gathering user feedback outshine far-reaching hypotheticals.
Design simply then perfect – Good design starts barebones focusing only on core jobs to be done. But take pride obsessing over intricate details for beloved products to stand test of time.
Master complements – Seek out partners whose skills amplify your own rather than replicate. Divide and conquer assignments matched to innate strengths yields uncompromised results.
Customize to motivate – There is no master formula that equally incentivizes every employee. Effective leaders personalize challenging but fulfilling packages of autonomy, complexity and reward tailored to individual passions.
Set audacious goals – Impossible-seeming missions like going from 0 to 100 million sometimes take building, but prove worthy rallying calls that attract talent craving purposeful work.
Krieger rarely gives interviews these days, preferring to stay out of the spotlight. But his insights on technology leadership are still highly sought after among founders and students.
Stanford University‘s Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Seminar series hosted Krieger as a distinguished speaker in spring 2021. In lively dialogues with eager aspiring startup founders about all things company building, design thinking and startup culture, one thing became clear:
Over a decade after those initial late nights scrambling to get Instagram‘s first prototype working, Mike Krieger remains as intellectually curious and excited as ever about unleashing innovations that positively impact people‘s lives. Wherever his next venture takes shape, the tech world is all ears.
