What do you call it when you have your Grandma on speed dial?
Instagram! (Insta[nt] Gra[ndma])
The story of Instagram is one of the best Silicon Valley stories to read and one of my personal favorites. The Instagram application took 8 weeks to be created and launched on the app store. About 18 months later, Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in cash and stocks.
The story begins in 2009 with a 27-year old Stanford University graduate named Kevin Systrom, who was working for a startup at the time. It is worth noting that Systrom had no formal training in computer science, but learned how to code at night and during the weekends. One of his resulting projects was named Burbn, which was built in HTML 5. The Burbn application allowed users to check in, post their plans, and share photos. The photo sharing portion of his application was widely considered the best feature of the application.
Systrom’s biggest break came when he attended a party for a start-up named Hunch. While there he met two venture capitalists, and Andreessen Horowitz. He showed them his prototype for Burbn, and later met up with them for coffee to discuss it further. The meeting went well enough that he proceeded to quit his job, raise initial funds, and focus 100% of his time on the application.
Systrom was later able to bring a fellow Stanford graduate on board with him, Mike Krieger, and together they reassessed the application. They first decided to focus primarily on the photo sharing portion of the application. Next, they studied other photo sharing applications on the market and saw that they lacked social capabilities, but had other cool features such as filtering. Lastly, they decided to strip the Burbn application down to the photo, comment and like capabilities and take a minimalist approach to its development. The goal was to require as few actions as possible for the user.
After testing, and handing out the app to friends, they were able to launch the application on to the app store. It instantly became the top free photo-sharing application, racking up 25K users the day of its launch. By the end of the week, the application gathered 100K users and eventually reached a million in the next coming months. I think you know what happens next for Kevin and the Instagram team in this story.
If you are interested in reading more about Instagram, read about it from Kevin Systrom himself!