#1 Business Lesson Instagram Is Teaching Us
Introduce your idea to the world as soon as you can, get feedback, reflect, improve.
Trying to "perfect" the idea before launching it is not what I advise. And the story behind Instagram, an app that we all surely know, is a great example of this rule.
The truth is, an extremely popular social media app, @instagram, was close to a graveyard of millions of other apps that never "made it".
Yes, that's right. Instagram, we know right now, is far away from what it was when the founder first started.
Meet Kevin Systrom back in 2009. He was a young Stanford University graduate, who had no formal training in computer science. But he decided his nights are for learning to code while working in another company.
This man had a dream. He wanted to create a web app called Burbn, which was inspired by his taste for fine whiskeys and bourbons. The Burbn app allowed users to check-in, post their plans, and share photos.
Despite the $500,000 investment the app received for its development...it failed. There was little to no interest in the app.
A failure? It could have been, but the founder was wise enough to avoid mistake #1 - he didn't try to "perfect" things. Instead, he introduced the app, got feedback, and pivoted.
He was determined to find out a reason behind an initial failure.
And so, he interviewed the users of an app who all said they find an app way too complicated to use. Although the feedback was disappointing, there was something else that sparkled hope for Kevin Systrom. Everyone said that what they love about an app is an easy photo sharing feature.
And so, the founder decided to focus on photo-sharing and get rid of almost everything else. Burbn was renamed to Instagram and became a simple-photo-sharing app. To make it more interesting and user friendly for even very inexperienced photographers, photo filters function was added.
In just one day, the app had 25,000 users. At the end of the first week, Instagram had been downloaded 100,000 times. Two years later, Instagram was sold for $1 billion. Today, this app is worth $102 billion.
Isn't it crazy how an app that nearly failed the app turned into a leading social media platform?
And that's only because the founder avoided such a common entrepreneurs mistake - trying to make things perfect before launching.
Final thoughts
Learning lesson? Don't think and overthink your business idea in your own head. Talk with people, experiment, pivot, that's the only way to succeed.
Want to learn more about business? Then go a step further and download my FREE 22-pages Personal Brand guide right here. It covers so many rookie mistakes new entrepreneurs make when trying to build their brand on social media.
I hope you will enjoy the read, and don't be shy to reach out if you have any questions - I always respond to all messages I receive.