The story of Instagram’s explosive rise can lead like the Silicon Valley fairy-tale, with the company gaining momentum within just a few months. The photo and video-sharing social media application took only eight weeks for software engineers to develop before it was launched on Apple’s mobile operating system in October 2010. In 2009, Kevin Systrom, a Stanford University graduate, was working at Nextstop, a travel recommendations start-up. The then 27-year old had previously worked at Google as a corporate development associate. He had also interned at Odeo (a company that would later evolve into Twitter). Having no formal training in computer science, he learned to code during the nights and weekends while working at Nextstop. Working at the start up, he eventually came up with a prototype of a web called Burbn, which was inspired by his taste for fine whiskeys and bourbons. This app allowed users to check-in, post their plans and share photos. Needless to say, there were a lot of time and location check-in apps which were popular, but the photo-sharing feature of Burbn was very unique. In his article “The rise of the number one photo-sharing application”, Dan Blystone details that the crucial turning point happened in March 2010, when Systrom attended a party in Silicon Valley. That is where he met two venture capitalists from Baseline ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. After presenting his prototype to them, they appreciated the initiative, making Systrom realise that he needed to quit his job and focus on Burbn. In only two weeks, he had raised $500,000 in seed funding from both Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz to further develop his entrepreneurial venture. The funding allowed him to look for a team to work with, choosing his former school mates including the then 25-year-old Mike Krieger, a Brazilian-American entrepreneur who later on acted as one of his best allies in the company. After Krieger joined, they then started focusing primarily on photographs, especially taken by mobile devices. They also saw potential in building an app having the structure of a social media platform like Facebook. That is how they added the commenting and liking functions. That is also when they renamed the app Instagram, combining the words instant and telegram. They also focused on improving the photo-sharing experience, with an intention to make the app simple and user-friendly. The app was then launched on October 6, 2010 and racked up 25,000 users in one day. At the end of the first week, Instagram had been downloaded by 100,000 users and by mid-December 2010, the number of users had spiked to one million. The app continued to attract potential investors, to the extent that even other leading companies in social media technology like Facebook and Twitter became interested. Jack Dorsery, the co-founder of twitter, strongly expressed interest in acquiring Instagram, but was beaten by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder who purchased the app for a $1 billion cash prize. While user growth has continued to increase since the Facebook acquisition, the company appears to have been a savvy investment on the part of Facebook. In 2019, the market research company e-Marketer predicted that Instagram would reach 117.2 million users by 2021. In 2018, Instagram was the second-most downloaded free app on the Apple app store (after YouTube). In 2019, there were 1 billion people that used Instagram every month and in 2020, 500 million people uploaded stories on their Instagram pages.
