Kevin Systrom Success Story – How he Built Instagram from Scratch?

Introduction

Kevin Systrom is the most prominent 21st-century businessman who created Instagram. From a college student obsessed with cameras to one of the biggest social network sites in history, it is unimaginable. It was another software program for posting photos that became a billion-dollar company, transforming how people show off their lives on the internet.

When social media sites were already gigantic, Instagram developed a groundbreaking idea of providing an image and an easy way of sharing an experience. Instagram was revolutionary in that it was clean, clean-cut, and genius. Kevin Systrom considered building a site where users could share ordinary photographs and make them beautiful through filters, thus democratizing photography. His tale is a classic example of a vision to see the necessity for a market, receptiveness to user patterns of behavior, and compliance with the nature of innovation in the quest for higher levels of success.

It’s a biography that documents the life, aspiration, and rags-to-riches tale of Instagram creator Kevin Systrom. From childhood to college, from school to success that took Instagram to the top, it is a book that will make young entrepreneurs ride a roller coaster of making dreams a reality.

Table of Contents

Source: TechCrunch

1. Early Life and Education

Kevin Systrom majored in computer science and programming at Middlesex School. He had another technological interest because he read for his major in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

Systrom found his hobby photography at Stanford would be the cornerstone of his professional career. Systrom also founded Silicon Valley startup culture and interned at Odeo, Twitter’s future company. He learned how startups and tech startups worked through the internship. Silicon Valley’s high-risk, high-innovation, high-speed culture appealed to him.

Apart from internship and studies, Systrom was also a Sigma Nu fraternity member, where he learned leadership and networking. All these before embarking on his entrepreneurial life. He also belonged to the Mayfield Fellows Program, where he had first-hand exposure to handling tech veterans, venture capital, and startup growth.

Source: Interview Magazine

2. Early Career and Establishment of Instagram

Systrom also graduated from Stanford in 2006 and was a product marketer at Google. He managed to oversee some of their products, including Gmail, Google Calendar, and Docs, but he needed to create his own products. Google was a valuable learning experience, but Systrom was required to work independently.

He returned to Nextstop again, which was a startup firm dealing with travel suggestions. He started working with a clone of a photo-sharing application at Nextstop and named it Burbn. Burbn would be a social network location where they would check in where they were, share what they did, and earn points for what they were doing. Then, after releasing the app, Systrom knew users would want to post photos more than anything else. The Switch to Instagram

Once Systrom realized that the market was in demand and saw what everybody else was using, he rebranded Burbn as a photo-based app with a minimal interface. Systrom co-founded the firm with Mike Krieger, a Brazilian entrepreneur and Stanford University alumnus. The two co-founders tried to make the app simple as well as enjoyable.

Source: Britannica

They shut down the ancillary feature of the service and went ahead to develop an independent photo-sharing site. They rebranded the service Instagram, a name taken from the phrases “instant camera” and “telegram.” Instagram is centered on posting photos with filters in a structured and easy-to-use interface.

Instagram came live as a downloadable application on the Apple App Store on 6 October 2010. The application performed well on its first day, with 25,000 downloads on the first day and over 1 million users within two months.

Its simplicity in design, user-friendly filters, and photo-centric storytelling mode enabled it to soar into record-breaking heights. Its functionality within its use interface, compared to other social networking websites, and its ease of usage of Instagram facilitated its opening up to the general public.

3. Instagram’s Meteoric Rise

Its growth was simply remarkable. It reached over 30 million members in April 2012 and is one of the world’s fastest-growing social networking program sets. Celebrities and influencers, companies, and organizations were soon its victims because of the best choice to reach out to their readers, making it on the cusp of going viral.

One of the most substantial reasons why the popularity of Instagram topped all previous records was that it had taken a mobile-first strategy. All the other social networking sites were created on computers first; Instagram was made for mobiles first, and people themselves could upload images from phones. It gained over the youth generation, who used mobiles in terms of connectivity.

Secondly, the Instagram website was straightforward and even magical in the sense that users would spend hours and hours there. The hashtags made the content viewable for other users to view and consume. Thirdly, the ease of application with Facebook and Twitter, made it convenient for the users post-cross to put their content there, hence promoting the growth of the users.

Source: ensegundos.do

Instagram also cultivated a positive word-of-mouth visibility. Accounts belonging to celebrities and stars quickly followed, using the service to upload private sketches of their daily lives. These grass-roots endorsements legitimized Instagram and created millions of new accounts in months.

It also became popular with Instagram vintage filters. With the ease of use by anyone to make the face of anyone look good within a click or two, Instagram made quality photography accessible to any level of skill. The barrenness of the website and photo editing software fascinated the visitors and urged them to keep posting and posting more.

The rapid growth of Instagram also assisted in the way it grew by growing through the comments of users and trends in the market. The company provided updates and improvements regularly, so the users were kept unaware and still running the app. For instance, Explore, where users can view new content depending on their liking, keeps the app in the spotlight.

When Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, the site had already grown into a social networking giant. To become such a giant globally within two years of existence as a mere photo-sharing app is evidence of innovation, simplicity, and gradual introduction.

4. Facebook Acquisition and Future Growth

Instagram’s swift rise to gigantic success did not go unnoticed, and leading tech companies, including Facebook, took notice. After much deliberation, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was drawn to Instagram’s potential and negotiated with Systrom to buy Instagram in April 2012 for around $1 billion in cash and stock. The company then had a mere 13 employees, and this was one of the largest technology deals in history.

Under Facebook’s ownership, Instagram remained popular and added many new features to its arsenal. Some of the most lasting of these were:

• Instagram Stories (2016): A Snapchat imitation, the feature enabled users to post ephemeral content like photos and videos that would expire after 24 hours. It was extremely popular and became the center of Instagram user activity.
• An IGTV video tab (2018) for longer than one-minute-long videos to rival YouTube.
• Reels (2020): Reels permitted users to post and share audio and effect videos in response to TikTok.
• Shopping Features: Instagram introduced shopping features through which companies could sell products directly via the app.

By 2021, Instagram had over 1 billion active users and ranked among the world’s healthiest social media programs. People, companies, stars, and brands employed it considerably for promotion, messaging, and self-presentation.

5. Kevin Systrom’s Departure and Legacy

Despite Instagram’s slow growth, there existed conflicts between Facebook executives and Systrom on the course the application was to take. It was in September of 2018 that Systrom and Krieger publicly announced that they were leaving Instagram and would soon be seeking out new creative ventures. Everyone assumed that they left because Facebook would never hesitate to remind them to make Instagram an even more significant aspect of Facebook’s world.

Systrom’s contribution to the technological world cannot be questioned. His skill for hearing what the marketplace is calling for, stripping everything to bare user interfaces, and advancing a resolutely gorgeous-looking platform altered the paradigm of how human beings exchange and deal with information on the net.

6. Conclusion

The path of Kevin Systrom’s professional life from hardworking college student to co-founder of Instagram is a testament to the strength of innovation, adaptability, and determination. How he followed a piece of space in the market and developed a site that dethroned the social networking site is an exemplar of his entrepreneurial potential. The success of Instagram was not a product of mere technical sorcery but a result of the perceptive understanding of the users’ habits and the shifting cyber environment.

Under Systrom’s leadership, Instagram evolved from a picture-sharing website to a full-fledged cultural phenomenon that revolutionized how humans interact, communicate, and present themselves online. The rate of expansion, pivots, and seamless addition of functions catapulted Instagram to the most influential social networks of the 21st century. After its acquisition by Facebook, Instagram continued to grow and redid the web landscape in ways it had never done before.

Although Systrom no longer works at Instagram, his works will speak for themselves. His story tale will inspire the next generation of business owners, and something revolutionary can be imagined with vision, imagination, and inspiration. The story of Instagram demonstrates that ideas that defy rules when designed with creativity and foresight, can revolutionize the means of communication the world uses.