6. Instagram Was A Bourbon Appreciation App
In 2009 2-year-old Kevin Systrom was a Bourbon and Whiskey enthusiast who wanted to find out where the best places were in California to drink.
The Stanford graduate created the app called “Burbn” where users would post pictures of their favorite tipple before tagging the bar and which area they were in.
The side project started to become serious when the self-taught coder met two Venture Capitalists (VC) in a chance meeting at a party for another startup company called Hutch.
After securing $500,000 from the VCs, Systrom set about developing the Burbn brand with his friend from college Mike Krieger.
The trouble was that there wasn’t that much enthusiasm for the App as there just weren’t that many Bourbon fanatics in the area.
However, what was a big hit with their users though was the image and comments functionality together with the custom filters.
The pair decided to strip the whole app to just these popular features and renamed it Instagram.
It launched in 2010, and by 2012 Facebook had acquired them for $1 billion.