Instagram started as a failed check-in app — Burbn was too complicated, photos saved it

In March 2010, Kevin Systrom closed a $500,000 seed funding round from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz for Burbn, a mobile check-in app. Burbn let users check in at locations, post plans, earn points for hanging out with friends, and share photos. The problem was that it tried to do too much — and the check-in market already had a dominant player: Foursquare.

Systrom and his co-founder Mike Krieger realised Burbn was too complicated and too similar to existing apps. Users were not checking in, but they were taking photos. The two founders made a brutal decision: strip everything except photo upload, commenting, and liking. They added filters — inspired by Systrom's girlfriend's reluctance to post photos that didn't look artistic — and renamed the app Instagram, a portmanteau of 'instant camera' and 'telegram.'

Instagram launched on October 6, 2010. It grew to 100,000 users in a week, 1 million in two months, and 10 million in a year. On April 9, 2012, Facebook announced it would acquire Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock. The deal closed in September 2012. A check-in app that nobody wanted had become the most successful photo-sharing platform in the world — because the founders recognised that the feature users actually used was worth more than the product they had planned to build.