The creator’s background

In 2009, Kevin Systrom the founder of Instagram, got a job at Nextstop, a travel recommendation startup. Before His job at Nextstop, Systrom had a job at Google and he interned at odeo. Odeo would later become known as Twitter. Additionally, Systrom graduated from Stanford University. Systrom had no experience in coding. While at Nextstop, he taught himself how to code. After learning how to code, he developed an app called Burbn. The Burbn app allowed its users to share photos and post their plans. At the time this was very unique. This idea would pave the path to something huge.

Instagram’s rise to popularity

In March 2010, Systrom attended a launch party for the app Hunch. At the event, Systrom met two people that where willing to invest in his application. He showed the prototype and they where hooked. They gave him 500,000 dollars to invest into his app. This money helped Systrom build a team. The first person to join his team was Mike Kreiger. Once Kreiger joined he helped add key features to the app such as a user being able to share a photo from their phone. After months of hard work, on October 6 2010, Instagram was open to the public. On their first day, the app was downloaded over 25,000 times. At the end of the week, the app was downloaded 100,000. By mid December, the app had been downloaded 1,000,000 times! In 2011, Jack Dorsey, the co founder of Twitter, offered Systrom 500 million dollars for his app, but he declined the offer. In March of 2012, there was 27 million users on Instagram. In April of that year, Instagram was available to Android users. Within a day Instagram was downloaded 1,000,000 times by Android users! In April of 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for 1 billion dollars! By 2016, Instagram was available on almost any device.

Fun Fact; Instagram is the 4th most downloaded app of all time.