Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Graffur 1544 days ago
Ignoring the last decade part and the unicorn part.. and just looking at successful companies:

Google, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon, AWS, Apple/iPhone, Steam, Microsoft/Windows/Office, Revolut, Dropbox, lots of web hosting companies like DigitalOcean etc., lots of cryptocurrency companies like Cardano etc.

One notable exception that pivoted a lot is Twitter. It started as a podcast service iirc. Netflix is an interesting one too. They switched from DVDs to streaming which paid off for them.

Of course all have changed and added features as they have grown but they're all close to their original ideas which, imo, matches "build and they will come"
2 comments
webmaven 1544 days ago
> One notable exception that pivoted a lot is Twitter. It started as a podcast service iirc. Netflix is an interesting one too. They switched from DVDs to streaming which paid off for them.

Another notable pivot was Flickr, which started as a backend feature of an MMO called Game Neverending (which was never released IIRC).

link
akshatmittal108 1544 days ago
Well, to be fair many of them had some kind of prototyping to see if customers like the product or not before building the complete product and releasing it. AWS was first developed internally to solve their own developers problem. Dropbox had a very viral successful video to gauze customer interest. For Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg did develop many side projects (like gathering opinions about some historical art for class project etc) during his time in college before combining all the best features to release Facebook (which didn't have photo gallery feature at the time of release). One overlooked part I think is the network. I remember listening to interview of Stripe founder and he mentioned how that network helped in getting initial traction to the product, so it's not all about building in silos for months and hoping customers would come when the product is launched.
link
Graffur 1544 days ago
Good points. Network is so, so important. It's how apps like TeamBlind, "Yo!" or the anonymous posting one (I can't remember the name) became popular even though there was no substance.
link
Dracophoenix 1544 days ago
>anonymous posting one

Yik Yak

link