Instagram Co-Founders Announce They Are Stepping Down

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of the photo-sharing app Instagram, have resigned and plan to step down from the company in the coming weeks, The New York Times is reporting.

This adds to the challenges facing Instagram’s parent company, Facebook.

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@kevin and I are grateful for the last eight years at Instagram and six years with the Facebook team. We’ve grown from 13 people on the team to over a thousand with offices around the world, all while building products used and loved by a community of over one billion. We’ve loved learning to scale a company and nurture an enormous global community. And we couldn’t have done it without our amazing Instagram team, and the support of @zuck, @sherylsandberg, @schrep, and @chriscox at Facebook—we’ve learned so much from all of you. Now, we’re ready for our next chapter. We’re planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again. Building new things requires that we step back, understand what inspires us and match that with what the world needs; that’s what we plan to do. We remain excited for the future of Instagram and Facebook in the coming years as we transition from leaders to just two users in a billion. Thank you for being part of Instagram’s community—it’s been, and will continue to be, an honor.

A post shared by Mike Krieger (@mikeyk) on Sep 24, 2018 at 9:48pm PDT

Systrom, 34, Instagram’s chief executive, and Krieger, 32, the chief technological officer, informed Instagram’s leadership team and Facebook on Monday of their decision to leave. The Instagram co-founders did not give a reason for stepping down, but did explain they plan to take time off after leaving Instagram.

In a statement late Monday, Systrom said he and Krieger were “ready for our next chapter,” and hinted that they would be creating something new next.

Mark Zuckerberg responds to Instagram cofounders’ departure: pic.twitter.com/n6flCUvZMQ

— Jo Ling Kent (@jolingkent) September 25, 2018

The departure raises questions about Instagram’s future at a time when Facebook is facing its biggest set of crises in its 14-year history. Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion, when it had about 30 million users. Since then, the company has proven Facebook’s most successful acquisition.