Kevin Systrom closed $500,000 in seed funding for Burbn on March 5, 2010. The round came from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz while Burbn was still an early location-focused project.
Burbn began as a multi-feature service that let people check in to locations, make plans, earn points, and share photos. Systrom had been developing the idea before recruiting Mike Krieger, who joined the project in May 2010. The early funding gave Systrom the resources to leave his job and continue building the company.
The important historical twist is that Burbn was not yet Instagram. After examining how people used the product, Systrom and Krieger concluded that its many features made it too complicated. They narrowed the concept around mobile photo sharing, added filters, and eventually released Instagram in October 2010. The seed round therefore funded the predecessor that became Instagram, not a mature social network already operating under that name.