As Mike Isaac writes in Wired, “Facebook’s acquisition of the immensely popular photo-sharing service Instagram for $1 billion is far and away the largest acquisition in the history of the world’s largest social network. But for CEO Kevin Systrom and company, it’s a windfall payday like none other.
CEO Systrom owns 40 percent of Instagram, according to a source close to the company, who provided Wired with figures from 2011. That will net Systrom $400 million to take home as a result of the deal. Co-founder Mike Krieger holds about a 10 percent stake, and will net around $100 million. Benchmark Capital, the venture capital firm which led Instagram’s Series A funding round in 2011, has about an 18 percent stake, netting roughly $180 million from the deal. Andreessen Horowitz and Baseline Ventures, two investment firms backing Instagram, each have about a 10 percent stake, netting just under $100 million apiece.
The rest of the company’s 13 full-time employees will each get a portion of a nearly $100 million pool, with specific amounts awarded by how long the employee has worked at Instagram.
Announced early Monday, Instagram’s acquisition by Facebook is a huge win for a small, young company with a massive user base. In the two years since Systrom and Krieger founded Instagram, the photo-sharing app has exploded to a user base of over 30 million on iOS alone. Last week, the app finally became available to Android users for the first time, prompting over 1 million new user signups in the first 12 hours of release.”
As Instagram’s download site says, “It’s a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your photos with friends and family. Snap a picture, choose a filter to transform its look and feel, then post to Instagram. Share to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr too – it’s as easy as pie. It’s photo sharing, reinvented.”
You can read the whole story here.
Now if someone can figure out a similar app for cellphone videos . . .
