Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram: “What those who succeeded in changing the world have in common is that they tried”
The social network was born on October 6, 2010 and, 16 years later, that small photography app has become one of the most widely used platforms in the world
O n October 6, it will be 16 years since Instagram officially appeared in the App Store . The application was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger with an idea much simpler than what it would eventually become over time: to make it easier for users to share photographs from their mobile phones.
Instagram officially launched on October 6, 2010 . That first version was focused almost entirely on photography and allowed users to apply filters and share images quickly. In its first months, the platform began to gain users at a considerable pace and soon ceased to be an unknown app, becoming one of the great phenomena of the internet.
Kevin Systrom: “Focusing on one thing and doing it really well can take you very far”
Systrom has explained on different occasions that the road to Instagram was not marked solely by successes. In fact, before finding the formula that would work, the project went through different ideas and also failures.
“What those who succeeded in changing the world have in common is that they tried” , the founder of Instagram pointed out when reflecting on entrepreneurship and the importance of taking the step despite the possibility of making mistakes.
Systrom himself has acknowledged that Instagram was not an immediate success from the start either. In an interview with Wired, he explained that the project had initially been a startup that failed and that along the way he had to accept different mistakes and products that did not work., “ Focusing on something and doing it really well can take you very far” , he went on to point out while speaking about his experience.
The application, which began as a tool for sharing photographs, evolved into a much broader platform. In 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for approximately $1 billion, when the company had only been operating for a couple of years.
Today Instagram is part of Meta, but its origin remains linked to that first post on October 6, 2010. A date that marked the beginning of a project that, according to the very philosophy of its founder, was born precisely from daring to try.
