1EQQ8ZzGD

The story starts when I worked at nextstop. While I was
there working in marketing, I started doing more and more
engineering at night on simple ideas that helped me learn
how to program (I don't have any formal CS degree or training).
one of these ideas was combining elements of Foursquare
(check-ins) with elements of Mafia Wars (hence the
name Burbn). I figured I could build a prototype of the idea
in HTML5 and get it to some friends. Those friends ended up
using the prototype without any branding elements or design
at all. I spent weekends working on improving the prototype
for my friends. At a party for the Hunch folks, I ran into a
bunch of people who would basically make starting Burbn a
reality. At that party were two people from Baseline Ventures
and Andreessen Horowitz. I showed the prototype, and we
decided we'd meet up for coffee to talk about it. After the first
meeting, I decided to take the dive and leave my job to go solo
and see if Burbn could be a company. Within two weeks of
leaving, I raised $500k from both Baseline and Andreessen
Horowitz, and started work on finding a team.
Mike Krieger and I started talking and he decided he
liked the idea of helping start the company. once he joined,
we took a step back and looked at the product as it stood.
By this time, we had built Burbn into a (private) really neat
HTML5 mobile web app that let you: Check in to locations,
Make plans (future check-ins), earn points for hanging out
with friends, Post pictures, and much more.
We decided that if we were going to build a company, we
wanted to focus on being really good at one thing. We saw
mobile photos as an awesome opportunity to try out some new
ideas. We spent one week prototyping a version that focused
solely on photos. It was pretty awful. So we went back to creating
a native version of Burbn. We actually got an entire version
of Burbn done as an iPhone app, but it felt cluttered, and
overrun with features. It was really difficult to decide to start
from scratch, but we went out on a limb, and basically cut
everything in the Burbn app except for its photo, comment,
and like capabilities. What remained was Instagram. (We renamed
because we felt it better captured what you were doing
— an instant telegram of sorts. It also sounded camera-y).
So eight weeks later, we gave it to our friends, beta tested,
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