For many startup founders, getting a high valuation is only half the story, and one of the extraordinary motivations that motivates many entrepreneurs to build a startup is to change the way they see and interact with the world.

While every startup can teach people something, the most disruptive often teach people the most far-reaching lessons.

In a villa in San Francisco's Silicon Valley, Arthur looks at Kevin Strom and Krieger's workplace, and that's where their dream begins.

Arthur is really emotional, you know, without his appearance, Instagram would have no marketing budget, completely rely on an almost fanatical fan community to spread to the world, and then sell itself to Facebook for nearly $1 billion.

It's a pity that they ran into themselves!

“。。。 When I first came up with the idea of starting my own business, I wanted to make a location-based website that combines photo sharing with social media, similar to Fu Sikuai and the game company Zynga. I also named the idea Burbn.

The idea piqued the interest of Steve Anderson, a partner at Baseline Ventures, who offered Strom $250,000 in startup capital, but asked me to find a co-founder... “

With a bitter smile, Kevin recalled the situation when he first started his business a year ago, and introduced Arthur, who looked at the expression on Kevin's face and could understand the other party's mood at this time.

"I used to be in a café not far away to get ready to perfect Burbn, where he met Mike, who was my junior, and I spent a month trying to convince him to leave the chat software company Meebo, and finally I succeeded, Krieger joined, and the team of the two of us was built.

On the first day Mike joined, I said that the team would change direction because the previous model could not grow, and the competitor Fu Sikuai had gained too much first-mover advantage.

I wanted to reposition my product as a mobile app focused on photo sharing, codenamed Codename. We spent a couple of weeks refactoring the prototype, with me working on the backend code and Mike focusing on the iOS frontend. The app has a photo function and can also be used in social jiao, but we are still not satisfied with the results we have developed.

To get rid of my frustration, I went to an artist's estate in Mexico to rest and look for inspiration, where my girlfriend asked me how I should take beautiful photos with my phone, and I replied with two words, filters.

Suddenly, I was thinking back to the photography classes I had taken on an exchange trip to Florence during my time at Stanford, and the experience of using an inexpensive film camera to take artistic photographs. So in the rest of my vacation, I designed my first filter, which was the X-Pro II... ”

As he spoke, Kevin sat down in front of the computer and began to show and explain Arthur one by one, even Arthur, a technical idiot, could see that the basis of the other party's development of INS was indeed more perfect and detailed than his Instagram APP.

"Hmm, this is Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg?" Arthur asked when he saw a photo of several people with a familiar face.

"Yes, we're both members of the Stanford Sigmanu Brotherhood, and he asked me to join Facebook to help develop the image service, and offered options that are now worth tens of millions of dollars.

However, I still chose to continue my studies, to be honest, it was not easy to refuse this kind of youhuo, you must know that at that time Facebook was valued at $500 million... ”

Kevin shook his head and explained with a smile.

Arthur smiled and nodded, a flash of brilliance flashed in his eyes, and Krieg on the side said with a smile: "If you really want to talk about it, the popular Twitter now actually has Kevin's creativity in it?"

"Oh?" Arthur was intrigued again, and asked with some curiosity, "Tell me, what's going on?"

"Hehe, I can't say it's my idea... Kevin shook his head and smiled, seeing Arthur's expression, so he had to explain with a smile: "While studying at Stanford University, I joined the Mayfield Fellows Program at Stanford University.

This is a partnership with Mayfield Ventures, allowing project members to gain experience in the venture capital industry. In this program, I learned knowledge and experience in financing and trading, which is why I chose to start a business.

In this project, I also met Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, and we worked together on how to develop applications, and among these applications, Twitter was the prototype. However, the birth of Ins was also subtly influenced by Jack. ”

"I see!" Arthur nodded after hearing this.

Hearing these origins, Arthur was also relieved, how can there be any so-called self-made Silicon Valley myth!

You know, if Arthur hadn't appeared, when the INS development was completed, Kevin would have used his extensive connections in Silicon Valley to promote it, and these Silicon Valley bulls have become seed users of Instagram, and posted pictures using Instagram filters on the social website. Among these users is the founder of Twitter, which currently has 175 million users.

So soon, Ins' fame spread in the tech circle, which is actually an alternative celebrity effect.

This also makes sense, why Facebook's Xiao Mazi was able to complete the acquisition of INS, after all, people are friends in the first place, and they are also a brotherhood, so naturally everything is easy to discuss!

Therefore, the legendary stories of "self-made" that have been circulated when you hear it, just listen to it, but as everyone knows, there are many little-known secrets after the so-called self-made.

However, it has to be said that now many founders of enterprises will declare that they are self-made after success, how hard it is to start a business, how many days without sleep, gnawing on steamed buns for a few weeks... But those who are familiar with these founders know that the so-called self-made is a lie.

Obviously, he meows is a second-generation entrepreneur, and he has to make a self-made news, which is completely fooling the public, fooling those uninformed young people, thinking that entrepreneurship is very simple, and these successful entrepreneurs are self-made.

In fact, these people have some years of experience accumulation, and then the father-in-law is a big man, my father invested millions of dollars, and started his own business, think about such a person to start a business, with money, quan and experience, how can it not be done.

But there are too many people who don't know the inside story, so they are inspired by the so-called inspirational stories, and they have to start from scratch like a stimulant, and the result can be imagined.

The so-called self-made business of the rich is just to give everyone a thought, so that everyone has hope, don't start a business with a hot head, for ordinary people, it is very easy to get up after a fall in entrepreneurship, so you must be cautious.

So, always believe that there is no pie in the sky!

It must be admitted that the starting point of everyone's struggle is different, and the starting point of some people's struggle is the ceiling of others' struggle.

"Hehe, those who know me know that I am not a stingy person, you must know that my power plant is listed, it will produce dozens of millionaires, and all the employees of the plant have received listing dividends, and I will take out a part of the equity to establish an equity incentive plan in the future.

You two are great talents, I will never waste it, I have already called the London side, and the studio there will soon be a group of people.

Moreover, you may not know, in fact, the head of the video wall studio is the CEO of my game company, which means that the video wall studio is currently short of a CEO and a chief technology officer, if you can, I hope you two can help me support the video wall studio!"

Since he is a real talent, Arthur naturally won't let go, isn't it money and power?

As long as you can give him hard work, make money, reward and delegate power, that's fine!