Former Instagram CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom spoke publicly Monday for the first time since he left Facebook. When asked about his decision to leave the company, Systrom said “no one ever leaves a job because everything’s awesome.”
Systrom was one of the speakers at WIRED25, Wired’s 25th-anniversary summit in San Francisco, on Monday. Despite acknowledging that everything wasn’t perfect, Systrom said that he has no hard feelings and is excited to do something new. He also says that Instagram is “in a really, really good place,” CNBC reports.
According to The New York Times, Systrom and Instagram co-founder Mike Kriegar left the company due to growing tensions with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Specifically, issues they had with changes to the product and its staff, as well as Zuckerberg’s increasing control over the photo-sharing service.
As for what’s next, Systrom says he and Kriegar are still figuring that out. For the time being he’s decided to use his free time to focus on being a dad to his new daughter and is taking flying lessons from a former Google engineer who now runs the flying car company Kitty Hawk.
