

Play by Your Own Rules - Katelyn
https://medium.com/tech-talk/6152adc41de9

======
kurtvarner
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.

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.

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 _real_ game.

~~~
iamwil
Actually, you can, which was the point of his essay: focus on validating your
vision, rather than being reactive to someone else's actions.

They were too focused on being reactive to a competitor, rather than really
understanding their users. Because if you just copy whatever your competitor
is doing, you're getting the understanding of your users second-hand, and you
might end up copying things that aren't important--you might end up cargo
culting.

He's not saying, "Oh, if we had only just done photo sharing, we would have
knocked it out of the park!" He's saying that while checkins was a way to
validate that users want to play a game that lets them see the world through
their friends' eyes, they should have been open to other solutions to validate
against that original thesis (like photo sharing), instead of being caught up
in being competitive overriding the validation and learning about their users.

~~~
shawnc
The harder part is really looking at your users, how they use the product,
what they want - but not what they say they want. With my product, we have
people requesting features of the 'big dog' - only because that's what they've
seen. We're not about to blindly implement what a competitor does just because
they did it - it's assuming they did the research into that feature, and we
don't have to.

Anyway, essentially - it's really hard to not copy a competitor when that's
all your users are vocally asking for is to do just that.

------
pshin45
I'm not saying Gowalla originally copied Foursquare, but this blog post got me
wondering -

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)

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.

There seems to be a lesson in here somewhere...

~~~
ripter
Just about everything Zynga makes is a copy that overtakes the original.

~~~
samstave
Except their share price!

------
jonathanjaeger
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.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
I think branding did have some impact on Foursquare becoming more popular than
Gowalla, too.

At least the name "Foursquare" consists of real English words that mean
something on their own. This isn't true for "Gowalla". It looks and sounds
like gibberish.

A few years back, when this area was picking up, a co-worker of mine was
talking to us over lunch about these different services. He could remember the
name Foursquare right away, but not Gowalla. While trying to remember
Gowalla's name, he said that it sounded like "Gorilla", but it was something
different. It was only about a week or so later that I figured out he was
talking about Gowalla, after seeing it mentioned somewhere else.

I wouldn't be surprised if other people couldn't remember Gowalla's name, as
well.

------
iamwil
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.

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.

------
girvo
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:

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.

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.

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.

------
signed0
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.

[1] <https://medium.com/about/9e53ca408c48>

~~~
hboon
It's a blogging site that is in beta. Writers are invite-only. I see some
parallels to Svbtle.

------
Yhippa
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.

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.

------
zallarak
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.

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

------
tyang
Seldom do we get to hear from folks who almost made it big in such an
instructive and open manner. Thank you.

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.

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.

------
Mahn
Great article. I think Gowalla would have had a better chance if they
aggressively pursued the things foursquare _wasn't_ doing, like conquering
Europe for instance. I always had the feeling none of the two companies was
trying hard enough in Europe.

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

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

~~~
mansigandhi
That makes no sense.

------
throw_away_acc
> 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.

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.

EDIT: downvoting != disagreeing

~~~
cpocpo
And you're someone that uses a throw away account to call out someone. _Nice_.

[EDIT] The downvotes are for not adding value to the discussion here. Your
initial post was only a one-line hateful comment. Nice try updating it with an
unmarked edit.

~~~
throw_away_acc
Just focus on what I write and not on who I am.

Excuse my harsh words, but HN is for tech founders, for real entrepreneurs.
This is just the wrong place for someone who was once a founder but is now
employed for years (and writing such confusing posts).

EDIT: I am not sure who is spreading the hate here. Instead of distracting
with mentioning "unmarked edits" just try to comment on the content of my post
(which is about non-founders sitting in the safe haven and teaching us how
startups work).

EDIT2: your account is also kind of a throw away account (karma: 3 and just
one submission in one year)

~~~
cpocpo
So, anyone who has a job shouldn't be on HN? Dude, I think think the vast
majority of the HN community is employed by someone else. You can be into
hacking and technology without being an entrepreneur.

~~~
throw_away_acc
> I think think the vast majority of the HN community is employed by someone
> else.

I don't think so. HN is YC is full of real entrepreneurs and risk takers. Most
on HN are tech founders or at least employed _but_ with having side projects
and ambitions to get real founders. The OP is working at Facebook, proud of
being an employee and having no side projects (otherwise he wouldn't blog
about Gowalla years later).

~~~
NamTaf
I'm not. I'm here because I find the scene fascinating and thoroughly enjoy
the breadth of intelligent discussion on topics ranging from design to
programming to personal productivity to social effects on tech to etc.

I think it's incredibly unwise to play the elitism card and try to drive
people like myself away from HN. You risk suffocating the community and
producing an echo chamber of certain discussion points, eventually reducing to
stale repetition. It runs absolutely counter to the mandate of 'anything that
gratifies one's intellectual curiousity'.

I've seen experts in niche topics wade in and provide fantastic insight and
wisdom on information I'd never have thought to find here as it has nothing to
do with startups and hacking. I've tried to contribute myself (e.g.: there was
a discussion on spider's silk stopping a train and someone asked about the
structure of the train, the designing of which is my day job) and hope that
through doing so I can encourage others to return the favour.

The OP has experiences and insights directly related to the central pillar of
HN. His sharing them through blog posts or HN comments can be to the benefit
of the community. Rejecting them to fulfill some stupid sense of elitism for
the 'true entrepreneurs' is daft.

