That interview was bad. They're trying to make you feel bad for the Instagram founders because they were too stupid to realize that after you _sell_ your company you don't own it anymore. Also, per that interview, Instagram only became sustainable under Facebook.
> Instagram only became sustainable under Facebook.
That's an incredible leap to say IG couldn't develop their own ad network as a stand alone company. Hire a few people away from Google with options in a growing company the same way FB did.
If IG didn't sell they would have fully killed Facebook's relevancy by now.
Do you have a source that they refused any ads at all? There's a difference between having a few tasteful ones and overloading it like it currently is.
Hard to feel bad about it.