31–40 of 204 posts
MtGox, the infamous Bitcoin exchange that handled over 70% of the Bitcoin trading volume of 2010 was originally "Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange", a site for trading magic cards in MtG: Online. I don't know if it's that wild of a pivot, trading one virtual object and then trading another, but magic cards sure seem more innocuous.
Started as a tool for renting rooms in cities during conferences, where hosts were expected to provide no more than an air mattress.
Pivoted to full on house renting.
Chesky talks about it all here in the blitzscaling series, an interview series conducted by Reid Hoffman:
My friend Jason wrote this Tweet with 5 examples I don't think gets talked about much: https://twitter.com/JasonShen/status/1560680372463173637 Most notable one was probably Grubwithus (meet people over meals) -> GOAT (sneakers marketplace, valued at $3.7B)
Thanks Ricky! Yeah the 5 I wrote about are: Zimride (college carpool) → Lyft Grubwithus (shared meals) → GOAT Meerkat (Twitter livestream) → Houseparty Fates Forever (iPad MOBA game) → Discord The Lobby (finance recruiting) → Nuvocargo
Zimride to Lyft isn't much of a pivot, they're basically kinda the same thing.
I really dislike these stories because virtually all these companies lose the script (no second act). It seems that companies that start with a larger vision have multiple acts. Microsoft with software going from programming tools to OS to office to cloud. Apple with computing going from computers to iPods, phones, and tablets. Google with organizing the worlds information and making it accessible. Perhaps it is surv…
Toilet Paper -> Rubber Boots -> Electronics
I really dislike these stories because virtually all these companies lose the script (no second act). It seems that companies that start with a larger vision have multiple acts. Microsoft with software going from programming tools to OS to office to cloud. Apple with computing going from computers to iPods, phones, and tablets. Google with organizing the worlds information and making it accessible. Perhaps it is surv…
I'm not sure Microsoft had such a grand vision early on; they were late to the Internet after all. And their public cloud play came along later as well. Neither did Apple. And I'd say that Google went from organizing the world's information to mostly selling ads.
MtGox, the infamous Bitcoin exchange that handled over 70% of the Bitcoin trading volume of 2010 was originally "Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange", a site for trading magic cards in MtG: Online. I don't know if it's that wild of a pivot, trading one virtual object and then trading another, but magic cards sure seem more innocuous.
Actually Nintendo started (140 years ago!) also as card trading company before becoming a console giant
Sort of unrelated, but Japanese companies have a history of convincing Disney to do things they'd otherwise never do. Nintendo famously got a license to use Disney characters on their playing cards in the 1950s... something nobody else was able to do, and it was one of their most lucrative lines. Square Enix managed to convince Disney to license their IP for use in Kingdom Hearts, which is bizarre in numerous ways for the Disney MO, and it turned into something incredible. Studio Ghibli famously managed to prevent Disney from destroying it's films when released in the US by pulling a power play (they sent a samurai sword to Harvey Weinstein... yes that Harvey with a note that just said "No cuts.").
Twitch aka JustinTV, at one point the founding team tried to sell coffee tables with your blog post of choice printed on it.