[webmaven]

In general, the examples you cite are of early entrants being outcompeted by later entrants. Zimki was shut down despite (or because of?) it's success and experiencing he initial stages of hypergrowth. The successful PaaS entrants didn't show up until after Zimki had been defunct for a while.

You could also characterize this as "innovative startup strangled by acquiring behemoth or clueless greedy investors" which brings to mind a different set of examples, but that's not much more interesting.

What makes Zimki interesting IMO is that Simon Wardley successfully "timed the market" of technological change, clearly explained his thinking, and has since applied the same logic to make other correct predictions (or give good strategic advice).

[ignoramous]

> What makes Zimki interesting IMO is that Simon Wardley successfully "timed the market" of technological change, clearly explained his thinking, and has since applied the same logic to make other correct predictions (or give good strategic advice).

Has Wardley mentioned why they didn't pursue the start-up route (like Eric Yuan at zoom.us did; or Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes at SnowflakeDB did, to give recent examples)?

[webmaven]

Not so far as I know.

I always assumed that restrictive non-competes prevented moving quickly, and that Google's launch of AppEngine then sucked the oxygen from the room.