Kevin Systrom at Startup School SV 2014

Kevin: Thanks a lot for joining us today.

Audience: Absolutely!

Kevin: Thanks for having me. This is a nice big crowd.

Audience: Yeah, this is quite a few people.

Kevin: Well, we can just launch right in, of course. I guess you know the crazy thing about this audience right here is that there might be the next kind of really successful founder sitting in it. It might be you; it might be the person sitting next to you right now.

Kevin: I guess a lot of the thing that I love to hear initially is like how did you even come to startups? You know, at what point did you realize this was something that you could do and that you wanted to do?

Kevin: Well, the first thing I'll say is I challenge that there might be a founder here in the audience that's going to do something big. It's like the birthday paradox, right? Like, there's absolutely the chance that someone in this room here today will be the CEO, CTO, or founder of like one of the world's most changing companies in the next 10 years.

Kevin: We live in a really special place where people get to work on ideas where failure is tolerated. I mean, if you travel overseas to other places, there's a reason why Silicon Valley is so different, and it's because failure is tolerated.

Kevin: You asked me a question, which is why did I end up