When you see the name Mike Krieger, you wouldn’t know that he was born and raised in Latin America. He is now a well-known name in Silicon Valley because he invented an app that introduced and coined the term “selfie” and changed the relationship between a human and a picture.
In its early stages the app was explained as “a photo and video sharing social network”, it’s now become more than that and people noticed. It was bought by Facebook for $1B in 2012.
Instagram – A Short Story:
Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom cofounded Instagram in 2010. It started not as a photo app but a “check-in” app called Burbn. After carefully talking about how to make an impact, they pivoted into a photo app that changed our life “experiences”.
Mike Krieger the Succesful Journey of a Latino
Mike Krieger is a proud Brazilian. He was born in São Paolo, Brazil, and moved to California, in 2004, to attend Stanford University. In college, he majored in symbolic systems.
He is an Orgullo Hispano that tries to mentor other Latino Entrepreneurs. In the advice he gives, you can see that he believes in the power of small teams. He believes that size isn’t a representation of effectiveness and that small teams can build “world-changing” things. He points to Instagram being started with 2 people as an example of that.
Mike Krieger: El Consejo
El Dice, “once you figure out what you’re focused on, it doesn’t take a huge effort or a huge team to make that happen, and I like to think that even as we grew our product, we kept that mentality.” – A very Latino viewpoint!
Krieger, along with his cofounder, consistently talks about what is important to them. One key thing for them is encouraging Humility in Silicon Valley. This is something that keeps them hyper-focused on making sure they have many chapters ahead and is not just focused on short-term successes. They believe true success is measured not by the number of users but by the impact they have on the world.
They consistently attribute the success of their partnership to the fact that neither of them wants each other job.
What is Mike Krieger up to now?
In 2018, both Kevin and Mike left Facebook to pursue other adventures. Mike, and his co-founder, recently made a comeback in 2020. They joined forces to launch Rt.live, which was their first product together since leaving Facebook. Rt.live is an up-to-date tracker of how fast COVID-19 is spreading in each US state – this project recently came to end as the pair are looking for a new Aventura!
To learn more about Krieger and his cofounder, check him out at Brazil Silicon Valley, Recode in life after Instagram, or where he has a conversation with Obama about his experience as a Latino Entrepreneur, here on a Visa (Interesting bit: check out the interesting bit where he’s explaining Instagram, this was back in 2012!)