Play by Your Own Rules

You can't really blame them for taking the path they chose. Check-ins were what the market wanted at that time. Gowalla was guaranteed to be building for a market that existed. Yes, they could have said, "Screw check-ins, let's focus on photos", but that would have been a much bigger risk than going to war with an equally early staged startup.<p>Imagine if they would have drastically pivoted away from check-ins and failed. I'm sure Gowalla would be contemplating what could have been if they stayed true to check-ins and went to war with Foursquare.<p>I think it's too easy to say in retrospect that they should have "played by their own rules." Even though they were playing by the check-in rules, at least they were playing in a <i>real</i> game.

I'm not saying Gowalla originally copied Foursquare, but this blog post got me wondering -<p>What are some notable examples of a "copycat" startup actually overtaking the original "innovator" startup? Because I'm having trouble thinking of any off the top of my head. (And I'm not talking about cases like Facebook overtaking MySpace or Google overtaking Yahoo where a fundamentally different company overtook a long-dominant incumbent)<p>Foursquare beat out Gowalla, Google+ never had a chance against Facebook, Groupon beat out Living Social, Pinterest beat out all its copycats, Square has managed to stay ahead of the competition, same with Dropbox, Evernote, Y Combinator, Airbnb, LinkedIn, etc. I could go on but you get my point.<p>There seems to be a lesson in here somewhere...

Love the honesty. Not always great to chase competitors in a market that isn't even clearly a winner. Foursquare won the check-in race but now after all that time they're trying to rebrand away from the check-in, since the check-in business is still kind of niche. But hopefully the data turns into something meaningful.

This is some hard-won wisdom. You always know in your head that you're suppose to focus on users and not on competitors, but sometimes, until you make the mistake yourself, you don't know what it actually feels like in the thick of things.<p>The spectators in the arena, like your users and the media, like a drama. They'll invent one if they have to, in order tell a story to each other or to bring some excitement for people to care. But in reality, don't get caught up in the hype, and focus on the two things that matter: understanding users using your product, and understanding how to get more users.

Brilliant article. Something to keep in mind. I shuttered a start-up I was working on (VenueMenu) after participating in an accelerator here in Brisbane, Australia (called ilab, I highly recommend it!) for this one simple reason:<p>We were going into a market that was already defined, with a difference. This difference wasn't enough, and we were always going to be playing the rules of the 800lb gorillas already in place. It was a niche market, that was already over-served.<p>The nail in the coffin was that here in Australia, the competitors had seen exists at less that AUD$10m. Because of that, no VC's would touch us, so we couldn't get the runway we needed to launch and try to bust the market wide open.<p>I'm glad we decided to sink the ship before we left the port. I learnt a lot, and saved a lot of time and money.

Offtopic: is Medium a curated blogging site or a service that has yet to launch? The articles are great, but their about page[1] is unhelpful.<p>[1] <a href="https://medium.com/about/9e53ca408c48" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/about/9e53ca408c48</a>

I thought Gowalla was a beautiful app for the Palm Pre at the time. I was switching between that and Foursquare. In the end Foursquare won me over because of their dataset. I didn't have to constantly create new places to check in.<p>I think if they'd pivoted into something different where they focused on "seeing through your friends eyes" like the OP mentioned I think they would have been better off even if they'd failed. I did enjoy using the app but I could tell pretty quickly that playing the check-in game race was a losing one for them.

Well, both "lost". Foursquare doesn't really turn a profit, or if it does, I think it's insignificant? Now that I think of it, the relevant lesson from this is that investors are fallible.

Don't discount your writing skills, I found them quite readable. Great article!

Seldom do we get to hear from folks who almost made it big in such an instructive and open manner. Thank you.<p>Besides being a way to "see the world through the eyes of your friends", Instagram is a one-stop shop for taking pictures, photoshopping, and sharing to Facebook all in the same app.<p>I think the "genius", if you will, of Instagram is that it simplied things for users by combining two apps in one, without unnecessary features.

Great article. I think Gowalla would have had a better chance if they aggressively pursued the things foursquare <i>wasn't</i> doing, like conquering Europe for instance. I always had the feeling none of the two companies was trying hard enough in Europe.

Such a premium domain and it's just hosting a blog. What a waste of money.

Play By Your Own Rules, but host your blog on someone else's site.

&#62; Today I'm at Facebook. It's a special time to be at the company right now. We're able to build unique products that few others can dream of.<p>Sorry but you are nothing more than an office drone in a cooperation writing about achievements far in the past. Calling this post "Playing by your own rules" must be pure irony -- how can an ordinary product manager at Facebook play by his own rules? You are employed man, you play by others' rules and your post is a day dream, just a weak try to get some attention as a boring product manager and covering your endless desperation. Start something new and forget the past.<p>EDIT: downvoting != disagreeing