How Zuckerberg bought Instagram in 48 hours

Name: How Zuckerberg bought Instagram in 48 hours
Uploaded: 2026-04-06T18:50:32+00:00
Duration: 43 s
Channel: Sam Parr
Description: In this monologue, the speaker recounts the rapid acquisition of Instagram by Facebook in 2012. He explains that Instagram was poised to become…

6 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker recounts the rapid acquisition of Instagram by Facebook in 2012. He explains that Instagram was poised to become Facebook's biggest competitor and that without the purchase, Facebook might have struggled. Twitter had offered to buy Instagram for roughly $400‑$500 million, but Mark Zuckerberg reached out to founder Kevin Systrom, proposing to double the valuation of Instagram's current fundraising round, effectively valuing the company at $1 billion. Zuckerberg, his lawyers, and Systrom negotiated and closed the deal over a single weekend—within 48 hours—so that by Monday the acquisition was already complete, leaving competitors unaware of the transaction.

Chapters

There's a great story of Zuck when he bought Instagram. And by the way, today, if Facebook had not bought Instagram, Facebook might be dead. Instagram, like, literally ended up becoming the next social network. It was going to be his biggest competitor, and Facebook bought it. Twitter offered to buy it for something like $400 or $500 million. Mark Zuckerberg starts texting Kevin Systrom, and he says, hey, I want to meet— I want to talk to you about buying the company. He already has a deal on the table to sell to Twitter for $550 million, but he goes to meet Zuck. Zuck says, I want to buy your company. I will give you double whatever you're currently raising your round at. That would mean that Instagram would be worth $1 billion. But here's the deal, we got to do We can do this deal this weekend. Zuck, his lawyers, and the founder of Instagram over the weekend, they do a billion-dollar deal in 48 hours. By the time the competition woke up on Monday, the deal was gone. So that's the story of how Zuck buys Instagram.