No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

by Sarah Frier

Systrom was feeling invincible. Two weeks after the Stories launch, he recovered from the anxiety with a vacation. He was still on his cycling kick, trying harder and harder rides on different types of bikes he purchased from King. So on the trip, he challenged himself to summit Mont Ventoux, one of the most difficult hills in the Tour de France. “I have never worked as hard as I did on this climb, but I survived!” he posted on Instagram, posing triumphantly with his bike and a bottle of Dom Pérignon. His caption told the world his time was 1:59:21, only double the overall record of one hour. With that, he had finally earned the right to order his ultimate fancy bike: a Baum. The Australian maker of the bespoke bike would need a couple months to craft it out of custom-butted titanium to make it as lightweight as possible and tune it for Systrom’s specific riding style. It would also feature specific red and blue stripes, an homage to Martini car racing, that would take thirty hours to paint. Nate King was tickled, because most of the people buying a Baum from his shop did it for the prestige; he knew that Systrom would actually ride it.