Instagram was founded by Kevin Systrom (the CEO) and Mike Krieger in 2010 in San Francisco. They were both graduates of Stanford University, though in fact they didn't know each other there. They met later when Systrom created an app called Burbn. This was for sharing pictures and notes - he made it in his spare time while working for Google - and Krieger came across the app, was one of its first users and got in touch with Krieger. Seeing the potential of Burbn, they worked on it and simplified it to be just for photo sharing, changing the name to Instagram.

The new app was launched very early in the morning on 6 October 2010, and within a few hours already had over 10,000 users. Today it has several million and is one of the fastest growing apps in the world, but the company is still run by a small number of workers, with Systrom and Krieger still involved at every level.