They urged their employees to make changes only when necessary, resisting Facebook’s grow-at-all-costs philosophy in favor of a strategy that highlighted creativity and celebrity.

But the cofounders stayed on, trying to maintain Instagram’s beauty, brand, and cachet, considering their app a separate company within the social networking giant. That might have been the end of a classic success story.

In less than two years, it caught Facebook’s attention: Mark Zuckerberg bought the company for a historic $1 billion when Instagram had only thirteen employees. The cofounders cultivated a community of photographers and artisans around the app, and it quickly went mainstream. In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger released a photo-sharing app called Instagram, with one simple but irresistible feature: it would make anything you captured look more beautiful. “The most enrapturing book about Silicon Valley drama since Hatching Twitter” ( Fortune), No Filter “pairs phenomenal in-depth reporting with explosive storytelling that gets to the heart of how Instagram has shaped our lives, whether you use the app or not” ( The New York Times). In this “sequel to The Social Network” ( The New York Times), award-winning reporter Sarah Frier reveals the never-before-told story of how Instagram became the most culturally defining app of the decade. Winner of the 2020 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award * Finalist for SABEW'S Inaugural Best in Business Book Award

No Filter by Sarah Frier