My Age of Investment

San Francisco.

In a remote office building, Xia Jingxing was walking in the narrow corridor, stopping from time to time to look at the company nameplates and logos posted on the doorways on the left and right sides.

Liu Xiaoduo, who was following him, seemed tired from walking, and couldn't help but ask: "Mr. Xia, it's too hard to find this company. A group of us have been looking for it for so long and still haven't found it. Will they move to another place?" ah?"

Hearing this, Xia Jingxing also began to have some doubts. The company's address is obviously here, why can't he find it?

On the side, Rich Milner, the US managing partner of Envision Capital, said: "Darren, I am also a little confused. Is such a small company still worthy of your in-person interview?"

Xia Jingxing glanced at Ricky and smiled: "Although this company is small, its founder is a long-time friend of mine."

"Friends of many years?"

Ricky was stunned when he heard this, and looked at his surroundings. He really couldn't connect the founder of a company that was probably not much bigger than Ant with a world-recognized technology leader.

Moreover, since they are friends, why don't you notify the other party to come and pick her up? Why do you have to go from house to house like now? Not only is it time-consuming and labor-intensive, but the key is that you can't find her!

As if he had the ability to read minds, Xia Jingxing could see through Ricky's thoughts at a glance, and explained with a smile: "I haven't contacted him for a long time. I heard Christina mentioned him yesterday, so I wanted to come and see him."

Several people were walking and chatting when a small door in front of them suddenly opened, and a sleepy-eyed young white man walked out of it. He had a beard all over his face and his hair was messy, looking a little slovenly.

The others took one look at this ordinary young man in a plaid shirt and then looked away, but Xia Jingxing kept staring at this man.

"Kay"

The white man also saw Xia Jingxing, and then he rubbed his eyes to confirm that he had seen correctly, and his expression suddenly became very exaggerated.

"Dylan, why are you here?"

Xia Jingxing laughed and walked up. He first hugged Kestrom, who was wide-eyed and didn't recover for a long time, and then said, "I heard that you started a business. I came here to see if there is anything. It can help.”

Hearing these words, Kestrom was a little moved. After so many years, Darren Xia, who has become the fourth richest man in the world, has not forgotten his friend who he met in Weimo.

Then he felt ashamed again. Xia Jingxing had invited him to join Facebook many times, but without exception, he rejected them all.

In the words of his girlfriend, he turned down an opportunity to become a billionaire.

Although he and Kestrom had not seen each other for many years, Xia Jingxing did not feel unfamiliar at all. He briefly introduced the few entourage behind him to Kestrom, and then said jokingly: "Why are you still standing here? ?Don’t invite me in for a cup of coffee. I haven’t had your freshly ground coffee for a long time. I miss your craftsmanship.”

Kestrom was amused by Xia Jingxing's words, which also brought back the beautiful memories he had on campus.

When Facebook was still working at the Stanford Entrepreneurship Incubator, Kestrom would often come over to help out on a voluntary basis, such as making coffee.

But making coffee is just a side job. His real main job is photography. The first video uploaded to YouTube was shot and uploaded by Systrom. In the early days of Facebook, this Stanford alumnus helped Xia Jingxing a lot.

Kestrom greeted Xia Jingxing and his entourage very warmly and walked into his unknown small company. The decorations inside and outside were very simple. There was no company logo hanging on the door, which made Xia Jingxing hard to find. The office environment is also very crude.

Apart from Kestrom, this company only has three employees, fewer than Xia Jingxing's entourage.

After entering the room, Kestrom first introduced his partners to Xia Jingxing, "Darren, this is Mike Krieger, the co-founder and CTO of Instagram. He also graduated from Stanford University and is two years younger than us. session."

When Mike Krieger entered Stanford University, Xia Jingxing had already dropped out of school to start a business with his huge reputation, so Krieger seemed extremely excited when shaking hands with this idol of countless Stanford students.

"Kay, I didn't expect you really knew Darren. I always thought you were bragging."

Hearing this, Kestrom felt a little embarrassed, but Xia Jingxing calmed him down and said, "Kay and I have always been best friends, but when I returned to China to start a business, the contact with each other became less."

Speaking of this, Xia Jingxing glanced at Kestrom again and asked, "Before I have time to ask you, how have you been in the past few years?"

"Sit down and talk, I'll make you some cups of coffee."

After Kestrom invited Xia Jingxing and the others to sit down on a broken sofa, he went to make coffee alone.

Mike Krieger turned into a little fanboy and kept asking Xia Jingxing questions.

After a while, Kestrom came back with several cups of freshly ground coffee. After dividing the coffee among everyone, he also took a cup himself and started chatting with Xia Jingxing while drinking.

"After you left school, I was bored to death during that period. Later, I simply joined the research project established by Mayfield Venture Capital at Stanford, and then met Mike in the project team."

Xia Jingxing held a cup of coffee and listened quietly to Kestrom's account of his experiences over the years.

He found that his old friend had not been happy in recent years.

After the other party missed the opportunity to join Facebook and become an early core employee, he went to Florence, Italy to study. What did he study? Learn photography! The second generation of rich people are so chic.

After studying abroad and returning to the United States, Kestrom went to Anfield for an internship at an established venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, but unfortunately, he was not able to become a full-time employee smoothly.

Later, Kestrom completely let himself go and worked for well-known companies such as Google and OP. However, each period of working time was not long and he did not achieve any decent results.

Later, Kestrom, unwilling to be left alone, chose to start his own business.

Hearing this, Xia Jingxing interrupted and asked, "So you developed the Instagram photo wall mobile application?"

Kestrom shook his head, "No, our last product was called Burbn, a website that combined photos with check-ins and social games, similar to Fa.

But the development of this product is very rough. I learned programming by myself and developed it in HTML5 language. It only has a web version and no app because I don’t know how to develop apps.

It was miserable at the time. The website had been in operation for several months, but it only had dozens of users, all of whom were my friends. "

Ruiqi and Liu Xiaoduo on the side did not say anything, but they all had a question in their hearts: Is the boss's friend this good?

“At a later party, I met Steve Anderson, the founder of Baseiures Baseband Capital. After listening to my project introduction, he was willing to invest $500,000 in me, but the premise was that I had to find a technical partner to make up for my Technical shortcomings, and then I found Mike.”

After hearing this, Ricky and Liu Xiaoduo changed their views on Kestrom. It turned out that it was not useless. At least they could get angel investment.

Xia Jingxing listened with a smile, thinking that these old venture capitalists are really evil. They would dare to invest in an unreliable entrepreneur who founded a website with only a few dozen users. It should be Kestrom. There was something about him that struck Steve Anderson.

“After analysis later, Mike and I found that Foursquare has a first-mover advantage and has already seized the market for providing services based on LBS location information. Therefore, we can only find another way and focus on photo and mobile device services. above.

Then the two of us spent a few weeks refactoring the product prototype, with me responsible for the back-end code and Mike focusing on the iOS front-end, and together we developed Instagram. "

When talking about Instagram, his brainchild, Kestrom’s tone became obviously more excited.

"You know what? Darren, when Instagram was developed, I immediately felt that this was the product I wanted, and it was a perfect fit for me.

We first developed various filters for it, and then carefully selected a large number of outstanding photographers to serve as seed users of our product."

Xia Jingxing smiled and nodded, "Yes, I also feel that this product is very suitable for you. Isn't photography your hobby? Now you can turn your hobby into a career."

Kestrom said modestly: “Instagra has just been launched, so it’s too early to talk about a career.”

"you are too humble."

After that, Xia Jingxing asked Liu Xiaoduo to hand an iPhone 4 to him. Then he opened the phone and found an application with a logo that looked very much like a camera. He clicked to enter.

Pointing to the exquisite photos in the app, Xia Jingxing said: "Look at these photos, how exquisite they are, each one has an artistic quality.

And the various designs of your app are also full of artistic atmosphere.

As expected of someone who has been educated in Italy, his artistic aesthetic is naturally much higher than ordinary people like us. "

Kestrom was also very happy to be praised by Xia Jingxing. He smiled and said, "I actually didn't design it deliberately. I just wanted to make it the way I wanted it to be."

Xia Jingxing smiled and said nothing. Kestrom's words sounded a bit pretentious at first, but as someone who knew him well, he knew that he was telling the truth.

As the CEO and product manager of Instagram, Kestrom is undoubtedly the soul of this Internet product. It is no exaggeration to say that in the early days of the company's founding, his aesthetics determined the style of Instagram's products.

It just so happens that this kid is not a country bumpkin, but a young and talented young man who has many hobbies such as photography, coffee, travel, and whiskey, and cares about lifestyle. So the product style of Instagram has become what it is today. To put it simply, it is very popular. It’s pretentious, but this is what urban young people do, especially women. Who doesn’t like to take a few beautiful photos to show themselves on the Internet platform.

In addition, Kestrom also did one thing right. The early seed users were all professional photographers invited. This resulted in a very high artistic level in the early photos of the platform, and at the same time, it also served as a model for latecomers. of users take pride in taking beautiful photos.

Today’s smartphones still don’t have the best pixels, but Instagram has developed a filter function that lowers the threshold for taking photos, which is also a major selling point to attract users.

The combination of various reasons made Instagram a complete explosion as soon as it was launched!

“I heard that Instagra released the first version of its mobile application on the AppStore last month. In just 24 hours after it went online, the number of users easily exceeded 25,000. The next week, it exceeded 100,000 users, and in January it exceeded 1 million users. In the end, even the server was overwhelmed.

This user growth rate is far higher than that of Facebook back then. "

Hearing Xia Jingxing's words, both Ricky and Liu Xiaoduo were a little surprised. How could this unspectacular young man in front of them and the app he developed be so powerful?

Kestrom laughed, "Dylan, how come you know so well?"

"Christina told me."

Xia Jingxing said with a smile on his face: "She said that many Internet celebrities on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are recommending the popular app Instagram, and your company has gained millions or even tens of millions without paying a cent. dollars of advertising effectiveness.

At present, the power of advertising has not been fully demonstrated. In the next few months, the number of Instagram users may exceed 10 million.

Seeing that your business has been so successful, I am sincerely happy for you. "

Kestrom smiled and said, "It's too early to talk about success now. The Instagram product itself still has many problems."

Xia Jingxing asked again: "I'm a little confused. Do you look down on Android or something? Why have you only developed iOS applications?"

Kestrom and Mike Krieger looked at each other and smiled, and the former said: "We can only develop iOS applications, not Android applications."

Xia Jingxing was speechless and said, "You can definitely recruit Android engineers?"

Kestrom said: "We are recruiting. The two employees sitting in the corner were the ones we recruited a few days ago."

Xia Jingxing looked like he hated steel, "Isn't it too few to recruit two employees? And aren't your servers all crowded? Don't be reluctant to spend money, and seize the precious opportunity for expansion! "

Mike Krieger said: "Darren, we have our own development plan and don't want to reduce the good community atmosphere because of blind expansion."

"Why don't you expand? If you don't expand, your competitors will soon catch up. Don't underestimate the fierceness of market competition."

Xia Jingxing's words made the two of them immediately alert. Isn't Facebook also interested in the photo social networking field?

Xia Jingxing glanced at the two of them indifferently and said with a smile: "First of all, let me declare that your potential opponents may include Facebook or Microsoft.

Microsoft inherited Fickr from Yahoo, which was the dominant image social network in the PC era! More threatening than Facebook.

I have now completely quit Facebook. Whether it will compete with Instagram in the future, to be honest, I don't care.

I only care about one question at the moment, Kai, do you and your Instagram need my help? "

Seeing Xia Jingxing's sincere eyes, Kestrom hesitated.

He had refused Xia Jingxing's solicitations several times in the past, which proved to be extremely stupid.

Now Xia Jingxing extended an olive branch again, and it might be the last time to help him.

If I refuse, will I regret it for the rest of my life?

Kestrom glanced at partner Mike Krieger and found that the other person was a little moved, so he said: "Darren, tell me, how do you want to help us?"