[spaceflunky]

Google wasn't the first search engine...

Apple didn't sell the first smartphone or tablet...

Facebook wasn't the first social media site...

Amazon wasn't the first to sell shit online...

And Lyft wasn't the first ride-sharing app.

Maybe being first to market is overrated?

[karthikvellanki]

This may be semantics but technically Lyft was the first to come up with the Uberx model of anyone becoming a driver.

[cududa]

Not really. They head Uber was about to launch it and pre-emoted by a few days. Still to this day haven’t been able to suss out who was really first with the idea.

[stunthamsterio]

Interestingly, I used to work for a company that worked with the London Black cab manufacture to developer ride-hailing from a mobile phone. This was back in the early 00's. I always wondered if there was any patent portfolio that is relevant to Lyft/Uber. It was called Zingo, sadly the only reference I could dig out from a cursory Google was a story about it going bust: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2004/nov/25/transportin...

[malandrew]

I thought SideCar was first with the idea.

[neom]

That's totally true, sad you're being down-voted. Second market mover advantage is equally as strong as market makers. As a second market mover, you just better be prepared to wake build.

[bonesss]

> Maybe being first to market is overrated?

Sometimes being first to market yields an unshakable dominance in that market for a long time to come... Mostly not though :)

What you're pointing out is often called 'second movers advantage'. Apples iPhone is a pretty decent example: by not being the first phone provider Apple got to enter a maturing market with a mature offering, use their own core competencies, and dominate. That's hard to do if you're bogged down with backwards compatibility and fighting to make the tech possible.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I'll give you the other ones, but I'll challenge the Amazon example. Sure, there may have been other small sites selling stuff online, but Amazon definitely was a first mover in selling lots of stuff at volume. With all your other examples I can name the companies the later movers overtook (e.g. Google -> Yahoo/Alta Vista, Apple -> Blackberry, Facebook -> Myspace), but I think the first time I bought something online it was a book from Amazon.

[InclinedPlane]

When Amazon started they were far from dominant. For a long time they only sold books. Then they only sold classical music CDs. Bit by bit they added other things, like other music, DVDs, and eventually basically all retail goods.

But for years they were basically just one among many sites, and not even terribly notable in the overall retail space. There were lots of other companies selling lots of other stuff at the time. Buy.com, for example, and ebay of course. Of all the ways to buy things online amazon was pretty far down the list until the mid 2000s.

What Amazon brought to the table was a unique combination of good web dev / services skills and top notch fulfillment logistics. And highly competitive pricing. Buying things on amazon was just a better overall experience compared to other sites. For example, when you put something in your shopping cart on amazon it stays there, it doesn't magically disappear for some artificial reason. And the overall experience of search/browse, read reviews, add to cart, then checkout, which today is commonplace throughout online retail was really particularly well honed by amazon. They didn't invent the form but they shaved off all the hard edges. This meant that amazon had much better customer retention than other sites and as amazon added new product lines existing amazon customers often decided to just use amazon for those things too. It took years and years for that momentum to snowball into the online retail juggernaut that Amazon is today.

A lot of other companies at the time had more revenue and invested more money into their stores than Amazon did, but they didn't win because ultimately they didn't execute as well. Amazon was helped by being online early, it gave them the experience necessary to build into what they became, but it's a stretch to claim they had first mover advantage.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> Of all the ways to buy things online amazon was pretty far down the list until the mid 2000s.

That's just not true. Yes, they focused largely on books and music originally, but they were still a first mover in ecommerce and a huge presence. Heck, their 1 click patent was published in 99.

[sdenton4]

Amazon was a leap up from other online booksellers, just as Google was a leap up from other search engines...

Lyft isn't a leap up from Uber. But I do stick with Lyft because Uber's been so cold.

[hn_throwaway_99]

What other online booksellers were there in 1995? I don't remember any.

[spaceflunky]

Barnes and Noble was around, but they just did not take it seriously enough

[hn_throwaway_99]

According to wikipedia B&N's website was launched almost 2 years after Amazon.