Read Online You Only Have to Be Right Once by Randall Lane - Free Book Online

to breakfast to convince him to quit Meebo and join Burbn as a cofounder. Krieger’s response: “Count me interested; we’ll talk more.” The pair field-tested the partnership—working on small programs after work and over weekends—and after a few weeks Systrom proved more persuasive than Zuckerberg had been years earlier. Krieger quit Meebo and started what would be a three-month process to obtain a U.S. work visa.
    On Krieger’s first day on the job, though, Systrom declared that Burbn wouldn’t survive—Foursquare had too much traction. They had to build something new and decided to streamline Burbn into a photo-only, mobile-focused service. “The iPhone was so new, and people were creating really cool stuff and creating new behaviors,” Systrom said. “It was an opportunity to create a new type of service, a social network that wasn’t based on a computer but the computer in your hand.”
    Over the course of two weeks the cofounders hunkered down at Dogpatch Labs near AT&T Park, cranking out a photo app they called Codename. Krieger designed the Apple iOS software while Systrom worked on the back-end code. The prototype was basically an iPhone camera app with social and commenting functions. Neither was too excited about what they had built. Frustrated, Systrom needed a break.
    He rented a cheap house at an artist colony in Baja California, Mexico for a week’s vacation. While walking down the beach, his girlfriend, Nicole Schuetz, asked how one of their friends posted such amazing-looking photos over the app. His answer? Filters. Suddenly Systrom remembered his experience with the cheap camera in Florence. He spent the rest of the day lying on a hammock, a bottle of Modelo beer sweating by his side, as he typed away at his laptop researching and designing the first Instagram filter that would become X-Pro II.
    Back in San Francisco, new filters soon followed, like Hefe (named after the hefeweizen beer Systrom drank while designing it) and Toaster (in honor of the labradoodle owned by Digg founder Kevin Rose). They renamed the product Instagram and gave the new app to friends—many of them tech influencers like Twitter’s Dorsey—who started posting their filtered photos to social networks. Buzz began to build.
    Instagram gives low-quality camera phone pics a hip, retro feel. One tap on the touchscreen and an average sunset changes into a tropical postcard, an old bicycle gets a sting of nostalgia, and a half-eaten hamburger turns poignant. “Imagine if there was a funny button in Twitter or a clever button in Tumblr,” said Systrom. “Most photo apps before asked something of the users. They said, You produce, act, and perform. Instagram said, Let us take care of the secret sauce.”
    Recipe in hand, Systrom and Krieger launched Instagram on the Apple app store at midnight on October 6, 2010. Users flowed in, and Systrom and Krieger rushed to Dogpatch Labs to keep the servers stable. By 6:00 a.m. media sites like Bits Blog and TechCrunch had published stories about the debut. The servers melted. Systrom and Krieger worked a straight twenty-four hours to keep the app running—in that period 25,000 iPhone users downloaded the free service.
    â€œFrom that day on we never had the same life,” said Systrom. They called on Quora’s Adam D’Angelo, whom Systrom had met with Zuckerberg at a Stanford frat party, who helped Instagram get on Amazon.com servers and scale the platform. After one month, Instagram had a million users. Soon Systrom found himself sitting in the fourth row at Apple’s keynote watching Steve Jobs highlight the app before the crowd. They had made it to technology’s biggest stage, but keeping the Instagram servers running as users joined by the millions was still proving to be a major challenge.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    AS WE HUNG OUT in a booth at a cocktail bar called Tradition—Systrom,