Study Of Success Story Of Kevin Systrom

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Kevin Systrom is one of the co-founder of Instagram, Inc. (also known as Burbn, Inc) and also serves as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the team.

Kevin was born in year 1984 at Holliston, MA. In year 2006, Kevin has graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Management Science & Engineering.

After Kevin completed his internship with Odeo which later become Twitter, he spent two years at Google. He had worked for Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and later he participated in the Corporate Development Team. What makes Kevin to come out Instagram is the combination of the passion for social products to enable people to communicate more easily, and his passion for photography. (About Us, 2013)

Kevin is a young entrepreneur with the age of 29. Kevin has also been listed in the Fortune’s 40-under-40 list. (Saamizahra, 2012)

2.0 Company Background

Instagram was founded by co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in year 2010. Instagram exists as a program or application that allows user to share their photographs with and presented in a forms of social network which linked each others with friends. It was officially launched in October 2010. Instagram has a small team of 13 competent employees working 24/7 for its glory.

In September of 2012, Instagram has abount 100 million registered users all over the world. Baseline Ventures and Andreessen are the one who made the seed investment for Instagram. Instagram is available in both Android and iOS platforms. In April 2012, Facebook has purchased Instagram with approximately 1 billion USD. While instead of merging it into Facebook, Instagram has kept as an indipendent entity. (Saamizahra, 2012)

Instagram has achieved number of prestigious awards including:

"App of the year" for 2011 by Apple, Inc.

SF Weekly’s Web Award "Best Locally Made App" in 2011

TechCrunch Crunchies’ Runner-up for "Best Mobile App" in 2010

3.0 Business Services

Instagram provides a fast, beautiful and interactive way for user to share life with their friends through a series of pictures. It allows user to capture a photo, enhance it by apply a photo filter and share it. Not only in Instagram, but also share or upload their pictures shared on Instagram to others social media platforms which connected with Instagram including Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, and Posterousand. Instagram also act as a social network for users to interact with each other, such as command photo, like photo, sending follow request, approve request and so on. (Instagramâ„¢ Press Center, 2013)

Instagram basically contains few main tab including Sing-in Screen, Home Tab, Explore Tab, Camera Tab, News Feed, Profile Tab, Photo Maps and lastly Web Profiles. (Getting Familiar with Instagram, 2013)

3.1 Sign-in Screen

Sign-in screen allows new user to register and sign in to the Instagram. User can create a new account, or sign into an existing account. User can also perform password recovery in here when they having difficulty to sign-in. (Getting Familiar with Instagram, 2013)

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3.2 Home Tab

Home tab responsible for showing feed of photos that posted by user and their friends. User are allows to like or comment on photos in this feed. (Getting Familiar with Instagram, 2013)

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3.3 Explore Tab

Explore tab allows user to search for new and interesting user to follow. User can search for other users and explore new hashtags. (Getting Familiar with Instagram, 2013)

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3.4 Camera Tab

The Camera Tab allows user to take photos with the Instagram camera, or share photos from image library of user device. (Getting Familiar with Instagram, 2013)

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3.5 News Feed

The News Feed displays likes and comments on user photos, and lets them see the photos that their friends are liking and commenting on. (Getting Familiar with Instagram, 2013)

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3.5 Profile Tab

The Profile Tab shows user bio and Instagram photos. It's also where user can edit their Profile information, and adjust their Account Settings. (Getting Familiar with Instagram, 2013)

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3.6 Photo Maps

Photo Maps allows user to showcase where they have taken their photos, or explore where others have taken photo on map. User can edit their map any time and able to select each and every photo added. It provides an interesting way to view the photo added. However due to privacy issue, by default this setting is turned off. This means that no photos will appear on user’s Photo Map without their explicit permission. (Getting Familiar with Instagram, 2013)

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3.7 Web Profiles

User are allows to access and login to their account on the web by going to instagram.com with correct username and password. User also allows to view their profile by going to instagram.com/[username].

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http://instagram-business.tumblr.com/

http://infospace.ischool.syr.edu/2011/12/15/what-is-instagram-and-why-is-it-so-popular/

4.0 Marketing Strategies

There are several of reasons on the success of Instagram. Kevin has implemented some of the strategies and approaches to market his product, Instagram.

4.1 Free download

Instagram allows user to download the application free from the application store in both Android Google Play and Apple App Store. Furthermore, no extra charges for user to sign up in Instagram. User are allows to free access the application and enjoy the services without the any burden. (Instagram for Business, 2012)

This strategy successfully attracts large number of user where people are always enjoying free services.

4.2 Cross Platform

During the first launch of Instagram in year 2010, Instagram was only available in iSO version. However, when the application successfully attracts large number of user, it finally comes across to the Android version. (Instagram for Business, 2012)

Furthermore, Instagram is now available in Web where user can access to instagram.com and login to their account and enjoy the services in web browser.

4.3 Wider Network

Instagram are not the stand alone application. It allows user to link to different social network which includes Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, Foursquare, Weibo, and Mixi from Japan.

This allows flexibility for user to share their photo in different social network but not only restricted in Instagram.

4.4 Focus Objective

Instagram give a unique and focus objective to user which is to share images in a beautiful and funny way with others. In the prototyping phase of Instagram, the development team actually wanted to include different features in the application, but at the end it results in cluttered, and overrun with features.

After all, they finally decided to cut everything out but remains its photo, comment, and like capabilities. (Yung Hui, 2012)

A simple idea gives a great impression for user. Simple related and meaningful design makes Instagram more easy to use and making sense. User can easily understand the main objective of having this application.

4.5 Uniqueness

The combination of concept in Instagram is unique. The development team observed the limitations of others famous social network, such as Facebook and try to improve them by related to the objective of the Instagram. For example, Instagram added functions of photo manipulation. It provides various types of filters. This makes the photo sharing process become more interesting and amazing. (Lux, 2011)

Moreover, Instagram also combines the concept of Foursquare where it provides a Photo Maps.

Hence, Instagram is the combination of social network which focusing on using photo as a media to convey message, allows user to show photo in a photo maps and provides interaction to user. It gives a completely new experience for user since other social networks do not have such flexibility.

4.6 Multi-Language

Instagram is expanding their target user to global. Instagram is now being translated in 25 languages includes Afrikaans, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch and many more. Users are allows to navigate Instagram in their native language in both mobile and web. This move makes it easier for anyone around the world to interact in Instagram. (Instagram for Business, 2012)

This eventually expands the market of Instagram to global and increases the number of user to international.

5.0 Success Story

Kevin Systom starts his journey at Stanford University. Kevin loves the effect of Holga camera which is only a cheap plastic device. He likes the quirky square images produced by the camera with soft focus and light distortions. From here, Kevin would later combine the artistic inspiration with technology and develop Instagram. (Bertoni, 2012)

Kevin comes out with an idea of creating a platform where everyone can upload their photos, and can come together and even download sets of photos they want. Thus, He began developing a tool called Photobox when he stills a student in Stanford.

Kevin’s idea caught the attention of few entrepreneurs including Adam D'Angelo and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook. In year 2004, Adam and Mark invited Kevin to join Facebook Team since they are also work on some photo staff as what Kevin does. However, Kevin decided to turn down the offer from Adam and Mark. He decided to stay at the college and this was the first time they met each other. (Carr, 2011)

Kevin is then applied to Stanford’s elite Mayfield Fellows Program. This program is known as a work-study seminar that sends 12 students into the world of startups. Each of them is paired with entrepreneur and VC mentors. Kevin joins this program as a crash-course business school for startups. Fundraising, how deals were structured, how they came up with ideas and even hired people has provides the foundation for Kevin in future development. (Bertoni, 2012)

Through the Mayfield program, Kevin got an opportunity to joins a summer internship at Odeo which later become Twitter as an intern. Throughout the three months of internship in Odeo, Kevin realized that he not only loved to working at the startup and also enjoy working with a small group of people.

After graduating, he took a job at Google. He works in Google for years and he has eventually finding his way into corporate development. (Carr, 2011)

There, he began working with startups again, Kevin jumped to Nextstop which known as a social travel guide site. In here, he involve himself into Valley-grade coder, designing e-mail programs that suggested users to follow and building Facebook photo games. Kevin started to involve in more and more engineering which helps him in learning programming as he do not have any formal Computer Science education before. From here, he wanted to come out a site that would combine his passion for photos with location check-ins and social gaming, a small project included combining elements of Foursquare and Mafia Wars.

Kevin’s idea which later known as Burbn caught the attention of people from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz after showing his prototype written in HTML5. Kevin decided to leave his job and see whether Burbn can be a company. After the second discussion with the representative from Baseline Ventures and also Andreessen Horowitz, Kevin got the offer of $500,000 in total to launch the company. All he needs to do now is to bring in a cofounder.

Kevin then meets Mike Krieger, a Brazilian native. Mike Krieger had graduated from Stanford’s Mayfield program two years after Kevin and was working on applications of his own. A month later, Krieger was invited by Kevin to join Burbn as co-founder.

After discussion, Kevin declared that they had to build something new and decided to simplify and focus Burbn into a photo-only, mobile-focused service since the Foursquare had too much traction.

Right after the Krieger joined Burbn, he responsible on designed the Apple iOS software while Kevin worked on the back-end code. A prototype of iPhone camera application with social and commenting functions was created after that.

Kevin has an idea of adding the filter in the application during his vacation at an artist colony in Baja California, Mexico. After some hard work on research and design, the first Instagram filter was born.

The product are then being renamed as Instagram, an instant telegram of sorts and launched on the Apple app store at midnight on 6 October in year 2010 after completing all the testing and bugs fixing phase. Upon the first launch of Instagram in 24-hours, it becomes No.1 in the App Store. This makes the servers melted. Kevin and Krieger have no choice to work a straight 24 hours to keep the application running. During that particular period, there are 25,000 iPhone users downloaded the free service.

They asking helps from Adam and finally Instagram successfully get on Amazon.com servers and scale the platform. The number of user growth into a million in only one month from launch of the Instagram. Now, another challenge arise which is enhance and ensure that the Instagram servers can cope with millions of users.

These feats of server acrobatics will likely end once the Facebook deal goes through. Again Mark Zuckerberg invited Kevin took the offer with billion-dollar deal.

However, unlike other acquisitions of Facebook, Zuckerberg has decided to let Kevin to run Instagram independently instead of absorb into Facebook. Kevin and Krieger are allows to use Facebook’s resources to enhance Instagram into a more substantial service. Their final goal is to transform Instagram into a media company that communicates through photos.

Instagram still have room of improvement as the Android-based version launched four months ago. Moreover, the website version of Instagram are now available, user can sign in their account on the Web in instagram.com. (Bertoni, 2012)

6.0 Conclusion

After go through the study of success story of Kevin Systrom, I have come out some opinions.

From my point of view, the key factor that leads Kevin Systrom to success is his attitude. He knows his own mind, he knows what he wants and has ambitious to achieve something special and great. Instead of having a stable income and a job scope which compatible with the knowledge that he gained in university level, he decided to leave his job and create his own company.

Moreover, Kevin is tough as he does not easily give up and try his best to complete his goal. Although he does not have any programming background but this does not become the stumbling block of his success. His determined efforts on learning new knowledge from different area make him success in working out his idea.

Besides, although he became a millionaire now, but he still remained modest. He does not become excessive egoism because of his success. He still lives in his one-bedroom apartment and a secondhand black 2002 BMW with a broken GPS he bought when he worked at Google, relishes a relatively shoestring life. The $400 million do not turn him to materialistic. "I think not focusing on money makes you sane, because in the long run it can probably drive you crazy." he said. (Bertoni, 2012)

In conclusion, attitude decide how far we can travel, it decide our success. We have to get ready ourselves, try our best to acquire new skill and knowledge then only the opportunity will comes to us.