Free How to Create the Next Facebook: Seeing Your Startup Through, From Idea to IPO by Tom Taulli

People wanted better quality pictures from their phones without having to be a professional photographer.
The uploading process for pictures was too long.
It was not easy to share photos across multiple social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
    Once Systrom and Krieger had narrowed their focus and identified only the most pressing problems with mobile photo sharing, it was much easier to come up with the solutions to these problems. (Funny enough, it usually is harder to find the problems with an existing structure, not the solutions!) To address problem number one—picture quality—they created filters that made the pictures look beautiful and almost as if they were retro 1970s photos. As for problem number two—upload speed—the duo built the appso it would process the upload while users were doing other things on the app, like filling out photo captions. To improve problem number three, they simply sought to understand and integrate more completely the various platforms into their app.
    Instagram launched on October 6, 2010, and it was a runaway hit. By the end of the year, it had reached 1 million registered users. In April 2012, when Facebook agreed to buy the company, it had increased its head count to 30 million registered users. Although Instagram’s success is undoubtedly remarkable, it is even more so when you consider that there are hundreds of thousands of mobile apps available for download, making it extremely difficult for any one app to stand out from the rest of the crowd.
    If you’re intent on breaking out in the mobile app arena, there are some best practices to keep in mind. Perhaps the most important is to enter into an app category that is known to be habit forming, like photo and video sharing or games, to hook your users and keep them coming back to engage with your app again and again. Speaking of categories, if your app doesn’t fit neatly into one of the available categories on the app store, try to reposition it so that it does. Otherwise, marketing your app may prove extremely difficult. Last, although your app need not be overly simplistic, it should focus on a single function. If you include too many pages, too many features, too much complexity, you will most likely lose users’ interest; so, make your app instantly easy to understand and use. Often, this means sticking to the standards of your chosen app development program, which—as an added bonus—should make it easier for your app to sail through the approval process!
Stealth Startup
    Although the concept of a stealth startup —a startup that is working on its product in secret—sounds cool and may work for some types of businesses, such as high-end corporate networking technologies, it is often a bad idea for companies that are developing consumer Internet and mobile apps. After all, it is crucial to get user feedback on your product early on. Instagram’s Systrom calls the process of beta testing your product the “bar exam,” which consists of going to a bar and showing people your app. By observing their reactions, you can gain some valuable insights about your product.
    Beta testing proved critical for Instagram. Its first mobile app, Burbn, allowed users to check in to different places, but when they saw that it wasn’t gaining much traction in the marketplace, Systrom and Krieger set out to find out why. After talking to their users about Burbn’s features, Systrom and Krieger realized a common theme kept recurring in their conversations with users: The app’s photo-sharing feature was quite popular. The good businessmenthat they are, Systrom and Krieger decided to abandon Burbn and focus on developing their photo-sharing feature into a full-blown app; as a result, Instagram was born.
    In essence, Systrom and Krieger pivoted, which is another word for when a company abandons its original product and moves into another category. Not long ago, pivot would have been another word for failure, but in today’s world, in