I got home from a tour in a river of costa rica today, seeing crocodiles, monkeys and species of amazing birds to get a skype message from a friend notifying me that instagram sold to facebook for a billion dollars.  I said ‘what? really?’ This was surprising to me considering how new and young instagram is as a brand.  I looked it up and surely enough it was true! The story is quite interesting so I figured i would share it with you here along with some of the lessons I gleaned from the founders and from looking into and reading the story further.

Kevin Systrom founded Instagram just 18 short months ago.  Kevin was an intern at Odeo which was the company behind the creation of twitter. He also worked at google developing and evolving the growth of gmail and google reader.  He worked with multiple internet companies who have had big hits before.  This allowed him to have great insight inside the mind of large web-based technology company startups as well as understanding how users digested and used information through gmail and google reader.  His experience from working with Odeo could have taught him how to understand how broadcasting works.  Odeo is a podcasting company and twitter specialized in broadcasting short bits of information.

Throughout his life, whether he purposely designed it or not he learned intuitively how to take in and how to share data and information from large scale operations and perspectives.  Through all of this experiences he launched the Instagram website and Iphone application which allows users to share and post photo’s online in an easy and quick way.  They didn’t like that upload times were slow and the process wasn’t an easy or quick process.  Their goal with instagram was to speed up the upload time and make the process funner and easier to share on social networks online including facebook specifically.

Mike Krieger warns that when you start a company that you do not become tempted to just talk about your start-up and go to entrepreneurship events without getting work done.  Many entrepreneurs who start start-up companies tend to talk and tell people about what they are doing and spend a lot of time networking but using this can be an easy excuse to avoid getting work done.

Neither Mike or Kevin went to college for Computer Science and no one at the original team that created twitter even graduated college even.  It’s not about what you know, but who you know and how good of a relationship you have with them and what they know.  They recognized that:

1. Mobile Photo’s Don’t Look So Great.

3. You Should Be Able To Share Your Photo On Multiple Sites At Once.

They Recognized these three problems and verified that these were problems that people were actually having.  They created the first version and got this out to test the hypothesis.  Kevin believes that too many people believe that you have to solve problems in a really complex way but he say’s that you can solve simple problems with simple solutions.

The problem with stealth startups kevin states is that you need to get it in front of users and get feedback as quick as possible.

Kevin also states that you should not be afraid of failing, your failure when learned from will lead to your success.

The idea is to constantly refine this idea until it becomes more and more valuable and eventually massively successful.  One point that kevin make’s is to bootstrap as much as you can.  They raised 500k for instagram and they launched the first version for just 60k.  They could have boostrapped the whole thing and as it grew and launched they realized this.  I agree with kevin and you can see my video on why I recommend booststrapping over taking investment here:

Hopefully you learned a few lessons from the research I did into the founders and the lessons they’ve learned in getting a billion dollar valuation for a tech startup within 18 months!

Good luck in your startup, and I look forward to connecting someday!

David King

P.S. Until then, check out my webinar here and discover how you can create a sustainable passive income from home that can fund any of your ideas, dreams, or passions just like it has allowed me to do in my life.

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Check out guru masterclass to learn more!

Contact me on facebook here.

David King

P.S. These guru masterclass bonuses are up for grabs, so contact me and get which one you want.

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1. Guru Masterclass Bonus Eben Pagan is launching his new “Guru Masterclass” Click here...

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You can check out the bonus page and contact brendan or myself by going to The Magic Bullet System Bonus.

Take care and I Look forward to chatting and getting the best bonus that suites you.

David King

P.S. This is the best magic bullet system 2.0 bonus out there, honestly the truth is every other guru out there is throwing out their shitty courses that they can’t sell anymore and giving them to you because the tactics don’t work anymore.

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In this post i’m going to share with you a quote from whole foods CEO john mackey which I thought was worth reading and learning from in terms of business philosophy.

“Making high profits is the means to the end of fulfilling Whole Foods’ core business mission. We want to improve the health and well-being of everyone on the planet through higher-quality foods and better nutrition, and we can’t fulfill this mission
unless we are highly profitable. High profits are necessary to fuel our growth across the United States and the world. Just as people cannot live without eating, so a business cannot live without profits. But most people don’t live to eat, and neither must a
businesses live just to make profits.”

- John Mackey CEO & Owner Of Whole Foods

So do you run your business like this? Is your business just to make a profit and pay your bills? Or is it to change the world and be the change you want to see in the world.

One of the awesome things about being in business is that you can “Be the change you want to see in the world” on a bigger scale with a team of like-minded individuals.

Best of all you can pay people to be the change you want to see in the world and if they align with your vision it will be even more effective.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Find Your Purpose, Live your passion and focus on making a positive valuable impact and the profits will most definitely grow.

Take care and have an awesome day!

David King

P.S. John Mackey is truly an inspirational and successful businessperson that we can all learn from, please share this on facebook and twitter!

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