6th October 2010, marked 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 said 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 ZIPCAR. While his father was the vice president at TJX Company. He was first introduced to computer programming during his schooling days at middle-sex schools. Which only grew further while playing due to and creating his own levels as a site as a gluon age. He began creating programs to prank his friends by appearing to hack their AOL instant messenger account. Well, this undying love for technology was initially instilled in him from his mother like entered the tech world during its nascent stages. Although its first real job was far from technology Kevin began his college life with computer science. He later moved to management science and engineering programs because the classes at sears were more academic than applied and Emma’s 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 prestigious Mayfield Fellows Program at Stanford University. This is where he first got to taste how the start-up world felt like.
After completing his degree in 2006 Kevin joined google and went on to work for them for around three years he began as an associate product marketing manager and closed on products like Gmail google calendar spreadsheets among others and later. After two years, he moved ahead to the corporate development team Kevin always had the search of getting into the social space but for some other reason.in January 2009 Kevin finally decided to take the risk and join his start-up called nextstop.com as their product manager. While it next up 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 Foursquare and Flickr it was an app that allowed location-based photo sharing and he called it Burbn. Once the prototype was ready he presented the same to baseline ventures and Andreessen and Horowitz at a party in January 2010. Well, luck played its part, and within just two weeks of quitting his job, he received 500 thousand dollars as seed funding from both baseline ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. In Horowitz once that was done he knew that just like all the successful starters. He too needed a co-founder and he found that in his friend by Mike Krieger. Now because Burbn was very close to what Foursquare was they also got a lot of hype in tech blogs, but it wasn't really going anywhere. However, the one thing that clicked was photo-sharing. Kevin had understood that BurBn 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 Turk I’d 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 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 but transformed 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 6TH October 2010 they push 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 end life. 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 all night to get the server's back up and then to keep everyone online and running what has it that more than 25,000 people had signed up on Instagram in the first 24 hours. People just love the way the app allowed them to make their photographs unique without having to give sout personal information it was just about following others and sharing pictures. Within just nine months Instagram had a record-breaking 7 million users, it also included some of the highly influential tech-loving celebrities like Justin Bieber and Byrne Secrets.
Well, this is what posed much bigger bugs to take notice of this rising up. He realized that a lot of their users had stopped using Facebook to post photos and instead by sharing them by other Instagram feed and since, photo uploading had been one of the key elements of face book’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 & co in Arizona.After talking for a while in front of a campfire over drinks one night. Jack Dorsey and Ali Rowghani proposed together that they would buy Instagram for around five hundred million dollars to act Kevin was also being offered a great amount of funds from SEQUOIA Capital as well. After giving a lot of thought Kevin finally put an end to all the suspects and decided to go with the investment from SEQUOIA capital and remain an independent company. Kevin also contacted Mark Zuckerberg 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 discussion Mark Zuckerberg finally gave an offer that was double of what Twitter had floated and what the venture capitalists had valued the company act. Well, this time it was a deal Instagram along with its 13 employees was acquired by Facebook for approximately 1 billion dollars in April 2012. However, even after the acquisition, Instagram would still remain an independently managed company and is growing exponentially surpassing everyone's expectations. The Company is now housed at facebook's main campus in Menlo Park California.
After completing his degree in 2006 Kevin joined google and went on to work for them for around three years he began as an associate product marketing manager and closed on products like Gmail google calendar spreadsheets among others and later. After two years, he moved ahead to the corporate development team Kevin always had the search of getting into the social space but for some other reason.in January 2009 Kevin finally decided to take the risk and join his start-up called nextstop.com as their product manager. While it next up 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 Foursquare and Flickr it was an app that allowed location-based photo sharing and he called it Burbn. Once the prototype was ready he presented the same to baseline ventures and Andreessen and Horowitz at a party in January 2010. Well, luck played its part, and within just two weeks of quitting his job, he received 500 thousand dollars as seed funding from both baseline ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. In Horowitz once that was done he knew that just like all the successful starters. He too needed a co-founder and he found that in his friend by Mike Krieger. Now because Burbn was very close to what Foursquare was they also got a lot of hype in tech blogs, but it wasn't really going anywhere. However, the one thing that clicked was photo-sharing. Kevin had understood that BurBn 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.
Today Instagram is valued at more than fifty billion dollars it is also known to be a home for all 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 Instagram. Under his shells, Instagram has gone on to become the fastest-growing service of all time. He's a man who always believes in simplifying matter and using creativity to solve all problems. The product is also perceived by many to be home to visual storytelling for the masses. Being celebrities, newsrooms, brands, YouTubers, bloggers and musicians, and absolutely anyone we wish Instagram all the best for the future.