Visit our website startup stories. IN for more inspirational stories and updates from the startup world.Startup stories in association with O look. in. Sixth October 2010 mark the birth of an app that would be embraced by over a billion people including some of the world’s most powerful figures and was set to transform the nature of photography. Its arrival in Apple’s App Store was accompanied by a brief note outlining the company’s vision to make photographs fast, simple and beautiful. The company we are talking about today is none other than Instagram and this is the success story of Kevin Systrom.
Born on 30th December 1983, Kevin is the founder and CEO of Instagram. His mother was a marketing executive at Zipcard. While his father was the vice president at TGX companies. He was first introduced to computer programming during his schooling days at Middlesex school which only grew further while playing Doom two and creating his own levels as a child. As he grew in age, he began creating programs to prank his friends by appearing to hack their AOL instant messenger accounts. Well, this love for technology was initially instilled in him from his mother.
But entered the tech world during its nation stages. Although his first real job was far from technology. Kevin although began his college life with computer science. He later moved to management science and engineering program because the classes at CS were more economic than applied and MS had a focus driven approach towards practical subjects like finance and economics. Going ahead he was one of the twelve students who were chosen to participate in the highly Mayfield fellows program at Stanford University. This is where he first got to taste how the startup world felt like.
However, a year later after completing his degree in two thousand six. Kevin joined Google and went on to work for them for around three years. He began as an associate product marketing manager and worked on products like Gmail, Google Calendar, spreadsheets among others and later after 2 years. He moved ahead to the corporate development team. Kevin always had the search of getting into the social space. But for some of the other reason he just couldn’t.
However, in January 2 thousand nine. Kevin finally decided to take the risk and joined a startup called Next Top. com as their product manager. While at Next Stop it had become very clear to him that entrepreneurship was where he was meant to be. He just had to pursue his passion for photography and social sharing full time. In his spare time he started working on an idea which was a mix of four square and flicker.
It was an app that allowed location based photo sharing and he called it bourbon. Once the prototype was ready. He presented the same to Pesla Ventures and Andreson Horowitz at a party in January 2010. Well, luck played its part and within just two weeks of quitting his job, he received $500, 000 as seat funding from both baseline ventures and Andreson Horowitz. Once that was done, he knew that just like all the successful startups, he too needed a co-founder and he found that in his friend Mike Reager.Now, because Bourbon was very close to what Four Square was. They although got a lot of hybrid tech blogs but it wasn’t really going anywhere. However, the one thing that clicked was photo sharing. Kevin had understood that bourbon contained too many features and users always want something simple. That is when they decided to focus on one specific feature and that was photo sharing.
It was during that time that Kevin happened to go on a beach walk with his fiance Nicole. She told him that she would not use his app simply because her pictures would never be as good as the ones a mutual friend took and also told him that even he should add filters to their app which would make the pictures look better. Well, this was the last nail in the coffin.
They stripped the app completely and customized it only for the iPhone users at first. This was because iPhone 4 was just launched in the market and the phone had a high quality built in camera which transform the pictures and would make them look even better. Soon the duo began working on the idea aggressively for eight weeks straight. Tweaking code and refining the visual design.
And finally on the night of six October 2010. They pushed the launch button and Instagram was introduced to the world. The name Instagram is derived from the words instant and telegram. Well, within just two hours from the time Instagram went live. Its servers came falling down because of the rush of the traffic. Out of the fear of instant failure. They went on to work like crazy online to get the servers back up and then to keep everyone online and running.
Word has it that more than 25, 000 people had signed up on Instagram in the first twenty-four hours. People just love the way the app allowed them to make their photographs unique without having to give out personal information. It was just about following others and sharing pictures. Within just nine months Instagram had a record breaking 7 million users which also included some of highly influential tech loving celebrities like Justin Bieber and Ryan Secrets.
Well, this is what forced Mark Zuckerberg to take notice of this rising app. He realised that a lot of their users had stopped using Facebook to post photo and instead were sharing them via their Instagram feed and since photo uploading had been one of the key elements of Facebook’s own initial rise in popularity it was indeed a matter of concern to Mark Zuckerberg that is when he thought that why not they both be one company and propose the same to Kevin.
During the same time Kevin was also invited to the Tony Conference run by an investment bank called Allen and Co in Arizona. After talking for a while in front of a campfire over drinks one night. Jack Dorsey and Ali Raohani to Kevin that they would buy Instagram for around $500 million.To add to that Kevin was also being offered a great amount of funds from Sekoa capital as well. After giving a lot of thought Kevin finally put an end to all the suspense and decided to go with the investment from Sekova capital and remain an independent company. Kevin also contacted Mark to let him know about his decision. But unlike Twitter he doesn’t take no for an answer. He asked Kevin to meet up to discuss his decision in detail.
After deep and healthy discussions. Mark finally gave an offer that was double of what Twitter had floated and what the vensor capitalist had valued the company had. Well this time it was a deal. Instagram along with its 13 employees was acquired by Facebook for approximately one billion dollar in April two thousand twelve. However, even after the acquisition, Instagram would still remain an independently managed company and is growing exponentially surpassing everyone’s expectation. The company is now housed at Facebook’s main campus in Menlo Park, California.
Today Instagram is valued at more than $50 billion dollars. It is often known to be a home for all the celebrities. Some of these include big names like Eminem, Kim Kardashian, Cristiano Ronaldo, Justin Bieber, Shahrukh Khan and many more. Well, Kevin still takes care of the overall vision and strategy along with the day to day operations of the not so old startup. Under his shelter, Instagram has gone on to become the fastest growing services of all time. He is a man who always believes in simplifying matter and using creativity solve all the problems. The product is also perceived by many to be home for visual story telling for the masses. Be it celebrities, news rooms and brands to teens, musicians and absolutely anyone.
We wish Instagram all the best for the future.Thank you so much everyone for suggesting us to do a story on Instagram. We hope you liked it. Do let us know whose story do you want to see next in the comment section below and we’ll soon have it uploaded on this channel. For more inspirational stories and updates from the startup world. Visit our website startup stories. IN. Till then stay motivated.
