Thread by @varun_mathur, It’s the summer of 2010. Many people in the SF Bay Area [...]

It’s the summer of 2010. Many people in the SF Bay Area (+ elsewhere) are reaching the conclusion that photo-based apps would be a very big deal in this decade, and they were right.

However, why did Instagram win, over much better funded rivals Color and PicPlz ? A $100B story..

Lets back up to March 2010 first. Kevin Systrom had raised $500k seed for an app called Burbn, from a16z and Baseline Ventures. It was supposed to be a location-based startup but wasn't quite adding up for Kevin.

He started developing Instagram instead..
https://www.instagram.com/p/G/

PicPlz was the earliest to launch, driven by founders with prior successful exits. In Aug 2010, TechCrunch covered their launch.

If you are Kevin Systrom, what do you do ? Ignore, and keep building, of course. Two months later, Instagram launches. http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/picplzs-social-photo-app-comes-to-the-iphone/

Picplz's Social Photo App Comes To The iPhone

We've written about the launch of Picplz, a photo-sharing application being developed by imeem execs Dalton Caldwell and Bryan Berg. The startup initially rolled out an Android app earlier this year...

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/23/picplzs-social-photo-app-comes-to-the-iphone/

Color, another startup in this space meanwhile is readying a war chest. It goes on to buy the http://color.com domain for $350k. And http://colour.com for another $75k.

That's $425k for domain names only, compared to all of $500k raised by Instagram by that point.

In Nov 2010, a16z doubles down on PicPlz instead, investing $5 million in it

Kevin had pivoted to what PicPlz was doing - a nuance which NY Times handled a little differently

"we couldn’t morally go with Instagram"

Ethics > $

https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/how-andreessen-horowitz-fumbled-an-instagram-investment/

https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/andreessen-horowitz-isnt-hedging-its-bets-with-picplz-and-instagram-it-has-picked-picplz/

Color, meanwhile, with its top tier pedigreed team and massive ambition, went on to raise $41 million ($25 million from Sequoia), before their app launched, and hired 38 people in its Palo Alto office, with room for more

https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/03/24/sequoia-to-color-labs-not-since-google-have-we-seen-this/

The key difference here turned out to be usability.

Instagram was driven by "elegant minimalism", focusing on speed, self-expression (via filters) and instant gratification while PicPlz had an awkward UX, which this user pointed out

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Instagram-and-Picplz

Color, which had a great concept, ran into a "chicken or the egg" marketplace problem as it wasn't offering tools to enhance pictures, only to group them based on location

If enough people used it at a location, it would be valuable - but what's the incentive for the first few ?

PicPlz offered photo-enhancing filters, but its problem was of usability.

By Jan 2011, they had acknowledged user experience problems and had re-worked the app. One Quora user wrote - it was then as good as Instagram. https://techcrunch.com/2011/01/13/picplz-iphone-update/

PicPlz Adds Speed, Polish As The Mobile Photo Wars Rage On

As many of you are well aware, I write about a photo sharing service, Instagram, quite a bit. In my opinion, they've hit the right combination of speed, utility, and fun within a mobile photo app....

https://techcrunch.com/2011/01/13/picplz-iphone-update/

Instagram despite not having an Android app, and being up against startups (Color, PicPlz) backed by top-tier investors in its space, still came out ahead, as it focused on a simple + delightful product user experience.

It had the Hello Kitty effect.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120622213716/http://jonsteinberg.com/2012/04/14/the-hello-kitty-effect-and-why-instagram-and-pinterest-have-it/

Trying to understand how are breakthrough consumer products built: Stars vs Black holes.

Stars shine early + in all directions, but there are a billion trillion of them.

Black hole-like products are focused, grow quickly and put a real dent in the universe. Then, they shine.

"Our mantra, 'Do the simple thing first' took shape during these first weeks and months. ..If we had tried to future-proof everything we did, we might have been paralyzed by inaction."

Screenshot from my own notes +
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/why-instagram-worked/

Pre-Instagram Burbn had plateaued to about 1000 users. Founders chose a smaller, focused feature as a new product in itself: social photo sharing, for iOS users only initially.

They re-used Burbn code; 8 weeks dev time from start to finish => Instagram

https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/instagram-story-facebook-acquisition/

Instagram Growth
- Sept 2010: Private beta of 100 users
- October 6, 2010: 25,000 users
- November 2010: 1 million users
- 2012: 30 million users
- 2013: 200 million users https://www.wired.com/2015/10/five-years-of-building-instagram/

Five Years of Building Instagram

A cofounder shares his stories, lessons and challenges

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/five-years-of-building-instagram/

Summary:

Founders developed a very sharp + narrow focus, built a useful and beautiful product + leveraged Silicon Valley appropriately for news coverage.

Magic happened, they then focused on being able to scale and were able to take off exponentially

https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/20/instagram/

"The photography category seemed saturated, but Systrom saw an opening that many others didn’t"

Reading these essays inspired this thread:
http://paulgraham.com/fp.html
http://paulgraham.com/sun.html

Instagram was "not much new"

https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/instagram-story-facebook-acquisition/

cc @paulg you might like this thread

You can follow @varun_mathur.

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