How I Built This: so that’s how they invented Instagram

This new NPR podcast tells the story of how modest entrepreneurs Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger came up with one of the fastest-growing apps of all time

Instagram is one of those modern day inventions that nobody knew they wanted until it was there. In NPR's brilliant new podcast, How I Built This, Guy Raz talks to Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the two men responsible for bringing the ability to put a filter on your smashed avocado to the masses.

"I think the best thing for any entrepreneur is failure," says Systrom, whose road to success sounds like something out of a Douglas Coupland-esque fairytale. Working as a travel agent by day and learning to code by night, he came up with the idea for a check-in app, Burbn. After mingling with investors in a bar, he secured half a million dollars and found someone with a "shared interest in tinkering": Krieger. "My future flashed before my eyes talking to Kevin," he says.