Instagram’s Systrom Builds $1 Billion Application in Two Years

Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

Silicon Valley is one of the few places where a 27-year-old Web entrepreneur can parlay a photo-sharing application with no known source of revenue into $1 billion -- in two years.

Evidence of that came yesterday, when Facebook Inc. announced plans to buy Instagram, a startup co-founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom, a Stanford University graduate and former Google Inc. employee.