Back in the early 2000s, my business partners and I launched a number of websites. Some were successful (CollegeHumor, Vimeo), others were not.
This URL features a detailed, contemporaneous look at of one of the unsuccessful projects, a 2002 "social directory for college students" called Campus Hook. To my knowledge, this is the first time this document has been shared publicly.
It may be of interest to anyone looking at the history of social networking sites, especially the transition from online dating to more general interpersonal interaction.
It may also be interesting in the context of Facebook's history: although we identified a very similar demographic opportunity as the FB founders, we (obviously) failed to win the big prize.
(I contend that we failed because we were simply too old to care about the core product or users; by the time the site went live in early 2003, we were college seniors eager to move to San Diego and begin our adult lives. We could hardly have cared less about dorm-room dating. However, the lack of school email verification -- attributed to the Winklevii years later -- could also have been a determining factor!)
If anyone has questions, I'll keep an eye on this thread and do my best to answer. AMA!
That's amazing! We started Campus Hook in 2002 (I think) but the timing was bad for a few reasons:
1. A few years early in terms of college student adoption of internet
2. A few years later in terms of founders' ages (we were seniors and didn't really care about campus dating anymore)
So happy to hear you met on there, and, apparently, are still married! Perhaps it wasn't a failure after all :)
True, but I know about the potential of companies, and failing to reach that potential is a form of failure.
So you know all about the ultimate potential of every single company out there, formed and as-yet-unformed? Dude, if you're that prescient, forget this entrepreneurial thing and just buy lottery tickets, or go to the horse tracks.
All joking aside, I don't completely disagree with "True, but I know about the potential of companies, and failing to reach that potential is a form of failure", but I do disagree that you have any standing to mandate what everyone else should have as goals, or what their "success criteria" are.
I suppose if one were looking at it from the point of view of "the success of the company" as opposed to "the success of the founders" I could be more sympathetic to your position, but I didn't see anything in TFA that strongly suggested that that's where you were coming from.
True, but I know about the potential of companies, and failing to reach that potential is a form of failure.
So you know all about the ultimate potential of every single company out there, formed and as-yet-unformed? Dude, if you're that prescient, forget this entrepreneurial thing and just buy lottery tickets, or go to the horse tracks.
All joking aside, I don't completely disagree with "True, but I know about the potential of companies, and failing to reach that potential is a form of failure", but I do disagree that you have any standing to mandate what everyone else should have as goals, or what their "success criteria" are.
I suppose if one were looking at it from the point of view of "the success of the company" as opposed to "the success of the founders" I could be more sympathetic to your position,
I was, and this probably wasn't clear.
It was my first article in a while and there are a number of things I want to do differently in the next one, especially when introducing a contrarian point. I appreciate your feedback.
Maybe it wasn't clear from the article, but I was talking about the acquisition of a company, not a product. Hackers, and SV people in general, tend not to distinguish between the two, as many "startup companies" are actually just attempts to commercialize a single product idea. The potential for a company is orders of magnitude greater, because a company can create endless products. If you're talented enough to build things that are useful to people, why not found a single legal entity that creates many things, mitigating per-thing risk and exploiting countless economies of scale?
The potential for a company is orders of magnitude greater, because a company can create endless products. If you're talented enough to build things that are useful to people, why not found a single legal entity that creates many things, mitigating per-thing risk and exploiting countless economies of scale?
Now that I totally agree with. And that's one of our goals at Fogbeam Labs. I'm absolutely down with the idea of building a large, sustainable, profitable company that branches out into many fields. I've joked with people that our goal is to be "the next Red Hat", but in a lot of ways, I could say that we want to be "the next IBM" or "the next GE" and it would be more on point.
The big part of TFA that I disagree with is the part where you presume to tell entrepreneurs what their ambition ought to be. That and what came off to me as a judgemental tone, but that probably had a lot to do with the title.
okay, that is indeed a good point. one dissenting pov is that the "hollywood model", where a group of people come together, create something, and then dissolve, has produced some great stuff, but i can see how a company can accumulate shared vision and synergy that is lost when it is acquired.
The existing businesses were nurtured and optimized reasonably well. I was lamenting the loss of the creative spirit that generated those two businesses in the first place -- the larger, more valuable core of the company.
I kid because the title seems designed to be provocative. It's not always failure to sell out. Quite the opposite in my case, but I hear you. You "sold out" and lost something in the process. They have been good stewards of Vimeo. It's one of the quality sites on the web, so I wouldn't fret too much. You created something wonderful. That's more than most people.
Back in the early 2000s, my business partners and I launched a number of websites. Some were successful (CollegeHumor, Vimeo), others were not.
This URL features a detailed, contemporaneous look at of one of the unsuccessful projects, a 2002 "social directory for college students" called Campus Hook. To my knowledge, this is the first time this document has been shared publicly.
It may be of interest to anyone looking at the history of social networking sites, especially the transition from online dating to more general interpersonal interaction.
It may also be interesting in the context of Facebook's history: although we identified a very similar demographic opportunity as the FB founders, we (obviously) failed to win the big prize.
(I contend that we failed because we were simply too old to care about the core product or users; by the time the site went live in early 2003, we were college seniors eager to move to San Diego and begin our adult lives. We could hardly have cared less about dorm-room dating. However, the lack of school email verification -- attributed to the Winklevii years later -- could also have been a determining factor!)
If anyone has questions, I'll keep an eye on this thread and do my best to answer. AMA!
-Jake Lodwick