10% of startups fail within the first year, 70% of startups fail between their years two to five, and about 90% of startups eventually fail. Reasons for failure range from funding to misreading market demands, but there are some core values that if overlooked, would open loopholes for failure to set in.
Here are some values displayed by Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom and how they helped create a solid foundation for the world's most popular photo-sharing social media platform.

1. Don't give up on your personal dreams.

Beginnings can be difficult, especially when you are just starting out or don't have funds to kickstart. But it's vital to remember why you started your startup and the goals you wish to achieve with it. Kevin Systrom (Co-Founder of Instagram) learned to code on weekends and at night while working at Nextstop, a social travel recommendation startup, and eventually built a prototype of his application Burbn which would later evolve to Instagram.

2. Network! You might just bump into your next investor.

In March 2010, at the launch party for a startup, Systrom met two venture capitalists from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. He showed them a prototype of Burbn, had a further discussion and they eventually invested $500,000 in seed funding.

3. Analyze the market and your competition

With the emergence of new technologies and products, you can't be surprised to encounter competition. After Mike Krieger (Co-founder of Instagram ) joined Systrom's team, they reassessed Burbn and studied popular apps in the same category as the one they were building, such as Hipstamatic - A photo-based app that already had features such as filters but lacked the ability to share photos among virtual communities/friends.

4. Simplicity- Don't overload your product with features.

Another core value that helps to improve startup success is simplifying your products as much as possible. The Burbn team stripped the app of unimportant features and focused on its "Liking", "Commenting" and "Sharing" features on photos posted on the app. It was at that time that they renamed their app Instagram, combining the words instant and telegram.

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5. Optimize & improve customer experience

After much fine tuning on Instagram, they shared the beta version with friends to evaluate the performance after which they fixed errors and made improvements.

They finally launched on Oct. 6, 2010, with the first photo being a puppy at a taco stand in Mexico uploaded by Kevin Systrom. They got 25,000 users in a single day, a week later, they had up to 100,000 downloads and by Dec. 2010, they had about a million users.

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Kevin Systrom on Instagram: test

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References

• What Is Instagram and Why Was It Successful? - investopedia.com/articles/investing/102615/..
• The story of how Instagram started and what entrepreneurs can learn from it - financialexpress.com/industry/the-story-of-..