City profiles
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger Time to unfriend Facebook? Instagram’s co-founders seem to think so, says The New York Times. Kevin Systrom, 34, and Mike Krieger, 32, who sold their photo app to Facebook six years ago and then stayed on to run it, have finally decided to quit. Neither has stated why, or what they plan to do next. But tech sites, citing anonymous sources, claim there were “tensions over Instagram’s degree of independence from Facebook” and clashes with its supremo, Mark Zuckerberg, over product changes. The duo’s exit is “more than a symbolic change”. Instagram ad revenues now account for nearly 30% of Facebook’s revenues. Whoever is chosen to lead this “engine of growth” faces “a daunting task” maintaining the pace. Facebook shares, down 24% since their July record high, could remain under pressure. The former Tory party treasurer and founder of CMC Markets grew up on a council estate in Hackney, east London, “where his alcoholic father would drink up to 25 pints of Guinness and a bottle of rum per day”, says The Sunday Telegraph. He poured “any money we had down the pub”, recalls Cruddas, who left school at 15 to work as a telex operator at Western Union, occasionally doubling as an office cleaner. Now a billionaire with a £42m Mayfair home and private-jet lifestyle, Cruddas, 64, credits his giant leap to spotting the opportunities held by the internet before other traders. But his upbringing was also crucial. “If you wanted anything in our household, you had to go to work to get it.”