The classic startup article fallacy. Let's look at these group of winning startups (from the somewhat distant past) and then find some commonalities and then make them a general guide for startups today. Without looking at the losers, you have no idea what characteristics of the "winning" startup was actually the most important. I have no doubt that for every one company that succeeded at one of these bullet points, ten failed doing something similar. That isn't to say the ideas are bad, but the fact that one startup succeeded doing them doesn't mean it is good.<p>Also why is everybody so afraid to mention luck in posts like these? I think if you build a product for a new web browser, and that browser becomes the #1 browser on the internet, that is pretty lucky. Yes, there is a ton of skill there too, but also a ton of luck.<p>I'm not saying the lessons in this post are necessarily bad, but statements like "This is how networked products achieve viral growth" and "So here’s the secret" are just hyperbole, nothing more.
A new one that I don't see mentioned much is Imgur + Reddit. Imgur started as means to share images on Reddit, but has since developed their own community, commenting system, etc that directly competes with them.
So there are 2 cases. First one is when a startup offers a brilliant product with the 'wow' and 'aha' moments. It spreads like crazy. Second one is when a startup with less striking product comes, executes well, pivots a lot and steals networked users from established ones.<p>In all cases once a startup becomes dominant, it starts limiting and throttling their APIs fearing others obsoleting themselves. So the lesson, is to find a new grownup <i>startup</i>, which is not yet defensively throttling its platform or not yet pursuing ultimate monetization of its network.
The title is a bit off in my opinion. AirBnB could be said to have stolen Craigslist's traction, but that really doesn't apply to examples like Youtube making sharing videos possible on MySpace. Youtube added value to MySpace and made it a better platform; AirBnB on the other hand added value to landlords and tenants - at the expense of Craigslist.
There was a similar discussion on a similar story 14 days back.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6268430" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6268430</a>
Youtube to Myspace does not seem like the same as the other comparisons. Myspace is/was a social network and better in-page videos -- no matter where they are served from - would only make Myspace more appealing because of how they catered to music bands. to say that Youtube stole Myspace's traction is like saying imgur stole Reddit's traction when instead, it's more likely that imgur's great service accelerated Reddit's popularity (at least with memes...I'm talking quantity, not quality :)) -- and vice versa. There was no reason that couldn't have happened with myspace/youtube
This is tangentially related, but here is less OT than in most discussions :)<p>I'm currently building <a href="http://www.bandol.it" rel="nofollow">http://www.bandol.it</a>, a Humble Bundle clone targeted at Italian Independent Music (and, maybe, books).<p>I'm experiencing the dreaded chicken and egg problem: bands won't give me their music if I don't have a big following, while people won't follow me if I don't offer them good bands.<p>How did Humble Bundle solve this?
I'm always amused by the way that what's old is always treated as new when it comes to online/digital marketing. While the methods may be different, brand positioning has always involved using the attributes, features and (especially) short-comings and weaknesses of the market players.<p>And the idea of "piggybacking" on other services that you know that users want isn't really new either... It's why Coke is the only cola you can get at certain baseball stadiums - Coke knows that people will come to the stadium and buy drinks, and they're "piggybacking" on that to drive demand in general.