Two years ago we invested $250,000 in Instagram. Thanks to the spectacular vision and effort of Kevin Systrom and the Instagram team, the investment will be worth $78,000,000 when the Facebook acquisition closes.
Ordinarily, when someone criticizes me for only making 312 times my money, I let the logic of their statement speak for itself. However, in this case, the narrative that some critics put forth has the nasty side effect of casting two outstanding entrepreneurs—Kevin and Dalton Caldwell—in an unfair light and glosses over an important ethical issue that we faced. As a result, I will clarify what happened and why we didn’t make even more money.
I would think very carefully before criticising any part of the Facebook acquisition of Instagram given the fact that it generally takes longer than two years to create a billion dollars in value.
