If Instagram wanted to be as big as Facebook, they could copy the strategy. But Kevin Systrom thought leaning too heavily on Facebook would be dangerous. He did want to be big, but he didn’t want to be Facebook. He wanted to recruit the best talent, but didn’t want them to bring over Facebook’s grow-at-all-costs values. Instagram, still tiny by comparison, was surrounded by Facebook’s culture. Even with more users than Twitter, and almost a third of Facebook’s users, Instagram had fewer than 200 employees, compared to more than 3,000 at Twitter and more than 10,000 at Facebook.
