
Stealing Traction: How Youtube, Paypal, AirBnB grew through piggybacking - khadim
https://medium.com/p/fbced00417e6
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birken
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.

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.

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.

~~~
benmathes
I worked at RockYou.com in its heyday, which was when we had the #1 app on
facebook, Superwall.

Superwall used exactly one of the strategies outlined in this article: Fix one
of the pain points on a platform. The platform was Facebook, the pain point
was sharing images and videos with your friends.

Facebook decided that sharing images and videos with your friends was a good
idea, perhaps because they saw our success with it.

Superwall died. Rockyou pivoted into something totally different. A couple
down-rounds of funding (I think).

"Take on the pain points of a platform" is usually referred to as "Don't try
to beat the platform at being the platform".

~~~
coryl
Eh, that's the catch with building on platforms. Live by the sword, die by the
sword.

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michaelbuckbee
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.

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victoriap
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.

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 _startup_ , which is not yet defensively throttling its
platform or not yet pursuing ultimate monetization of its network.

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arbuge
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.

~~~
jhonovich
"It’s important to note that Craigslist doesn’t allow external services to
post listings there and Airbnb had to go out of its way to simulate that
feature."

The author might make a good politician.

~~~
cinquemb
These claims always make me wonder: do sites really expect others to follow
their rules (assuming nothing is signed to make such contracts binding
legally?) if one is technically able to subvert them or are these in place to
cover their own six?

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denzil_correa
There was a similar discussion on a similar story 14 days back.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6268430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6268430)

~~~
bosnian
Incidentally, written by the same author! Great stuff!

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tarr11
Imgur is also a good example of this (piggybacking on reddit)

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belowlightsblue
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

~~~
bosnian
Yeah, as the other commenter says, 'siphoning' is probably better though it is
still stealing if you don't think of traffic as a zero-sum game. It's after
all only in zero-sum games like physical goods that stealing reduces value to
the owner.

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jnotarstefano
This is tangentially related, but here is less OT than in most discussions :)

I'm currently building [http://www.bandol.it](http://www.bandol.it), a Humble
Bundle clone targeted at Italian Independent Music (and, maybe, books).

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.

How did Humble Bundle solve this?

~~~
citricsquid
The people behind Humble Bundle were indie developers themselves, they were
already established in the industry so they had their own games to use (which
were popular) _and_ had industry connections.

~~~
brandnewlow
Right. The solution is to go make friends in the industry.

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Michael_Murray
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.

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.

~~~
sanguit
No, no one's claiming that anything is new. The fundamental rules of business
do not change. What does change is that all this happens in a world of
perpetual connectivity now and so some of the frictions go down, metrics
become more trackable and the whole process becomes more controllable. So yes,
some things do change.

