The Ledger
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Systrom: Instagram raised $8M Series A at roughly $30M valuation
“It was, I think our first round was like, I don't remember. It was like, we took eight million dollars of financing on like a 20 pre, so like roughly a thirty million dollar valuation or something.”
Krieger: Dropping app descriptive tags in press signals mainstream cultural arrival
“I noticed that the New York Times, when they would cover us, had stopped saying Instagram, comma, The photo sharing app, and then it was just Instagram. I'm like, oh, we are, we have now reached the point where they can assume that most of their readers know w…”
Systrom: Instagram took eight weeks from initial sketch to App Store launch
“It was only eight weeks from the time we had basically sketched it out to when we put it into the Apple store.”
Krieger: Instagram was the first company Facebook acquired and kept running
“We were the first company that Facebook acquired and sort of kept running, and then since then you've seen Oculus and WhatsApp”
Systrom: Instagram went from sketch to the App Store in eight weeks
“It was only eight weeks from the time we had basically sketched it out to when we put it into the Apple store.”
Systrom: Instagram reached 25,000 signups in its first 24 hours
“The first 24 hours, we had 20 5000 people sign up around the world, which sounded big to us at the time.”
Krieger: We seeded Instagram's beta by emailing Dribbble's top 10 designers
“So we picked basically the 10 top designers on Dribbble, and we emailed them, and some ignored us, which is fine, and some wrote back and said, sure, I'll try your app.”
Systrom: Instagram's Series A was $8 million at a $30 million valuation
“It was, I think our first round was like, I don't remember. It was like, we took eight million dollars of financing on like a 20 pre, so like roughly a thirty million dollar valuation or something.”
Krieger: Launching an app is like setting social norms at a party
“So we had this intuition that if you're going to throw a party, which is kind of what an app launch really is as people are streaming to the door, you want them to sort of know how they should act and who else is there.”
Systrom: Justin Bieber joining Instagram drove massive adoption among teenage girls
“And I remember Justin Bieber signing up, and the world going kind of bonkers for that as well, and by world, I mean teenage girls, and they basically started using the app incessantly, and it kind of took off with, like, a bunch of really young people as well.”
Systrom: The first Instagram photo was a stray dog in Mexico
“I literally just, like, researched how to make the first filter, which ended up being called X-Pro II, and if you scroll all the way back on my account to the very first photo, there's Nicole's foot and a little stray dog in Mexico, and that's because that day…”
Systrom: We pivoted to Instagram with $495,000 left in the bank
“We had, you know, 495,000 dollars left in the bank because 5000 dollars to buy a couple of computers, right?”
Systrom: Instagram raised a $500K seed on just a prototype
“And that initial check went from 50,000 to 250,000 dollars. And then there was another investor, Andreessen Horwitz, who came in and put 250,000 dollars in. So here are two guys with, like, basically a prototype and a couple of computers, no office who raised …”
Schrenko: Achigan Brand grew purely through organic Instagram marketing without paid ads
“We don't, we haven't paid a dime in advertising. Like we don't, it's a hundred percent organic. It's word of mouth. We use Instagram. That's kind of our like growth engine, but it's all organic posting.”
Sam Cagle: Dough Guy gained 130,000 Instagram followers since January
“I have since January, I've grown to about 130,000 followers.”
Siminoff's Shark Tank clips have generated over 100M social media views
“On, like, TikTok and Instagram, on the reels, people keep cutting up my shark tank, and then putting, like, the story, like, in, like, in a reel. It's over, like, a hundred million views, like, way over a hundred.”
Rodriguez realized her consumer influence when followers replicated her DIY recipes
“Women were actually making the exact recipes and trying it and experimenting on their hair as well, and I was, like, that showed me at that moment, like, oh, I have influence. They're taking what I'm saying, and they're, they see value in it, and they're actua…”
Rodriguez had just 500 Instagram followers when her recipes gained traction
“Oh, like, 500. 500. Yeah.”
Chandler: Tickle built Ringo.com as an early desktop Instagram equivalent
“We built a social network, a photo sharing social network called ringo.com, which was kind of like a early Instagram, but it was not on mobile because there was no mobile in 2004 or five.”