I Am a Nobleman in England

For many startup founders, getting a great valuation is only half the battle, and one of the extraordinary drives that motivates many founders to build a startup is changing the way they see and interact with the world.

While every startup can teach people something, the most disruptive often teach the most profound lessons.

In a villa in San Francisco's Silicon Valley, Arthur looks at the workplace of Kevin Strom and Krieger, which is where their dream began.

Arthur is really full of emotions. You know, without his appearance, Ins has no marketing budget and completely relies on the almost fanatical fan community to spread to the world, and then it will be sold to the world at a price of nearly 1 billion US dollars. Sold itself to Facebook.

Unfortunately, they ran into themselves!

"... When I first came up with the idea of ​​starting a business, I wanted to build a location-based website that combined photo sharing and social interaction, similar to that of Fusikuai and the game company Zynga. I also named this idea Burbn.

The idea piqued the interest of Baseline Partner Steve Anderson, who offered Systrom $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 to Arthur. Arthur looked at the expression on Kevin's face and could understand the other party's mood at this time.

"At the beginning, I used to prepare for the perfection of Burbn in a coffee shop not far away, where he met Mike, who was my junior, and I spent a month persuading him to leave the chat software company Meebo, and finally I succeeded. Yes, Krieger joined, and our team of two was built.

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

I wanted to reposition the product as a mobile app focused on photo sharing, codenamed Codename. We spent a few weeks refactoring the prototype, with me working on the backend code and Mike working on the iOS frontend. This application has a camera function and can also be used for social communication, but we are still not satisfied with the developed effect.

In order to get rid of the depression, I went to an artist's estate in Mexico to rest and find inspiration. There, my girlfriend asked me how to take beautiful photos with my mobile phone. I answered two words, filters.

All of a sudden, I was thinking back to the photography courses I took on an exchange in Florence during my Stanford days, and the experience of taking artistic photos with cheap film cameras.

So during the rest of my vacation, I designed my first filter, the X-Pro II. . . "

Speaking, Kevin sat in front of the computer and began to show and explain to Arthur one by one. Even Arthur, a technical idiot, can see that the foundation of the INS developed by the other party is indeed more powerful than his photo wall app. Perfect and detailed.

"Huh? Is this Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook?" Arthur couldn't help asking when he saw a person he knew in a group photo.

"Yes, we are all members of the Stanford Sigmanu Brotherhood. At the beginning, he wanted me to join Facebook to help develop image services, and gave me an option worth tens of millions of dollars.

However, I still chose to continue my studies. To be honest, it was not easy to reject this kind of youhuo. You must know that Facebook’s valuation at that time had reached 500 million US dollars. . . "

Kevin shook his head and explained with a smile.

Arthur smiled and nodded, with a flash of light in his eyes, and Krieger on the side smiled and said, "Speaking of which, Kevin's idea is actually in the popular Twitter now?"

"Oh?" Arthur was interested again, and asked curiously, "Tell me, what's going on?"

"Hehe, I can't say it's my idea..." Kevin shook his head and laughed, seeing Arthur's interested expression, he had to explain with a smile: "During my studies at Stanford University, I joined Stanford University's Mayfield Researcher Project .

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

In this project, I also got to know Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, and we worked together to study how to develop applications. Among these applications, there is the prototype of Twitter. However, the birth of Ins was also influenced by Jack's subtle influence. "

"I see!" After hearing this, Arthur nodded with a dazed expression.

Hearing these origins, Arthur was relieved, how could there be such a so-called self-made Silicon Valley myth!

You know, if there is no Arthur, when the development of INS is completed, Kevin will use the extensive contacts in Silicon Valley to promote it. These Silicon Valley bigwigs have become the seed users of Ins and posted it on the social networking site. Images with Instagram filters applied. Among these users is the founder of Twitter, which currently has 175 million users.

So soon, the fame of Ins spread in the technology circle. In fact, this is also an alternative celebrity effect.

This also makes sense, why Xiao Mazi of Facebook was able to complete the acquisition of INS, after all, they are friends from the beginning, and they are also a fraternity, so naturally everything is easy to discuss!

Therefore, if you hear the legendary stories about "self-made people", you can just listen to them. As everyone knows, there are many little-known secrets behind the so-called self-made people.

However, I have to say that after the success of many companies, the founders of many companies will claim that they are self-made. How hard it was to start a business, how many days without sleep, and eating steamed buns for several weeks. . . But anyone who is familiar with these founders knows that the so-called starting from scratch is a lie.

Obviously what he is talking about is the second generation of entrepreneurship, but he still insists on making a news about self-made. This is completely fooling the public, fooling those young people who don't know, thinking that starting a business is very simple, and these successful entrepreneurs are all self-made.

In fact, these people have accumulated some years of experience, and then what kind of big man is the father-in-law? Dad invested several million and started his own business. Think about such a person who starts a business with money, authority and experience. , how could it not work.

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

The so-called starting from scratch by the rich is just to give everyone an idea, so that everyone has hope. Don’t rush to start a business. For ordinary people, it is very easy to get up after falling down once in starting a business, so you must be cautious.

Therefore, always believe that nothing in the world is like a pie in the sky!

It must be admitted that the starting point of each person's struggle is different. Some people's starting point is the ceiling of others' struggle. Different births determine the difficulty of your struggle and the height you can achieve.

"Hehe, anyone who knows me knows that I am not a stingy person. You must know that when my power plant goes public, dozens of millionaires are born. All employees of the plant have received bonuses from the listing. In the future, I will give a part of it. Equity Establish an equity incentive plan.

The two of you are great talents, and I will never waste them. I have already called London, and some people will come from the studio there soon.

Moreover, you may not know that the head of the photo wall studio is actually the CEO of my game company, which means that the photo wall studio currently lacks a CEO and a chief technology officer. Can someone help me prop up the photo wall studio! "

Since he is a real talent, Arthur will naturally not let him go, isn't it all about money and decentralization?

As long as you can give him hard work, earn money, rewards and decentralization, that's not a problem!