The meta nature of running Instagram

Systrom wasn’t as confident as he sounded. He had actually been nervous to meet Crowley, since Foursquare was the talk of the industry. Instagram’s infrastructure was still struggling to support all the new users. He and Krieger weren’t sleeping well. There were plenty of strong competitors.

But pretending things were going more smoothly than they actually were was part of the job of being a startup CEO. Everyone needed to think you were on the right track.

His posturing was perhaps analogous to the modern pressure Instagram would introduce—the pressure to post only the best photos, making life seem more perfect than it actually was.

Source: No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier