I stumbled across this story today and thought I would share. Take a look below here is a photo of Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, two techies aged 27 and 25 respectively that are reported to have a company now valued at 100 million+ dollars.

So you would be thinking wow they must have really come up with a novel idea? Right? Err no not quite. Their company is called Instagram and their website consists of a single webpage offering people a free iPhone download, yes you read that properly, it was not a typo, I really did say free application.

So what does this free iPhone application do you might be wondering? It enables ordinary folks like you and me to send our picture to social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook.

Wait a minute doesn’t this already exist? Yes people like Twitpic amongst many others have been offering the same thing for years now. Instagram is believed to have currently something like 9 million users of their iPhone application.

It just goes to show all the garbage and conventional wisdom, we are fed about what it takes to be successful in business is not always true – they developed an iPhone application – in markets heavily saturated, that seemingly doesn’t do anything extra special but now their company is valued at around 100 million?

Maybe I am being a little harsh but do you think these two guys had thousands of pounds to spend on marketing, IPR/Patent lawyers, branding, messaging before they became successful entrepreneurs? No they didn’t even make the iPhone displayed on their website.

I have to just clap my hands in utter amazement and say nice one Instagram, I don’t have a clue how you did it … but congratulations.

Further reading:

Meet The 25 Youngest Entrepreneurs Running The World’s Most Valuable Startups

Instagram CEO tell the story behind the product: Do subtract