[mauriziocalo]

Two other great examples where you can get a peek of early versions of companies/products that ended up being huge: Wayback Machine and Show HN.

e.g.

Wayback machine:

- Airbnb (2008): https://web.archive.org/web/20080310025433/http://www.airbed...

- Uber (2010): https://web.archive.org/web/20101126114649/http://www.uberap...

- Twitter (2006): https://web.archive.org/web/20061127012643/http://twitter.co...

Show HN:

- Analytics.js / Segment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4912076

- Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

[wenc]

I'm curious though: the AirBnB website is often presented as how unprofessional-looking an MVP can be, but contextually, it didn't look super horrible compared to the websites of the time. Here's a bunch of "professional websites" in 2008.

https://www.wolfstad.com/2008/12/my-top-5-websites-of-2008/

I think expectations have evolved and the minimum standards of aesthetics in 2020 presents a higher bar. I wonder if an MVP that looked like that would work in 2020? I'm guessing the bar these days is at least a Bootstrap UI.

[saagarjha]

Those websites are so cute, particularly Airbnb's :) It's always great to see fledgling companies distinguish their business proposition to a market that doesn't even know about them yet.