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The myth of the overnight success

cdixon.org

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: The myth of the overnight success

#21
Agree with Chris. Also, how do you define overnight success? Huge traction in first few months? Significant revenues in first year? Or something else? If its building wildly profitable company then I don't think anyone (at least Internet companies) can claim they had overnight success.

Edit: Missed word "wildly"

Re: The myth of the overnight success

#22
post #13

One of my favorite examples is YouTube. They actually were about as close to "overnight success" as it gets. It was still something like a year and a half before they had significant traffic and most of us heard of them.

That's not accurate -- they launched the domain in Feb 2005; they uploaded the first video April 2005; they officially launched in November 2005; then Lazy Sunday went viral in December 2005.

They were already well known before Lazy Sunday, but that tipped them over the edge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

YouTube the company was an overnight success, if anything can be called that. I wouldn't say the founders had overnight success, but pretty close to it. They put in some time at PayPal and probably made out quite well from its sale, which allowed them to start YouTube. Some people just have talent + luck.

Re: The myth of the overnight success

#23
post #5

Anyone know of any examples of overnight success or close to it? Edit: Maybe Hot or Not?

This isn't a start up or anything like that, but since you asked for overnight success , I think the Kony 2012 stuff is a good example of that.

Are you kidding me? Did you even watch the video? Correct me if I'm wrong, but they've been trying to get him forever, and they still don't have him, so I wouldnt call that a success. Eyeballs != success. Accomplishing a higher goal (ie catching kony, making huge profit, getting acquired) == success.

Also, invisible children has been hustling for years without a huge 'hit'.

Re: The myth of the overnight success

#25
Great that Rovio makes the fact that Angry Birds was their 52nd game part of their mythology.

Every time I read a glossy write-up, I find myself wishing they'd dig a bit deeper into the trial-and-error and near failure that went on before companies became successful.

It takes grit, y'all!

Re: The myth of the overnight success

#26
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuckerberg was already a great programmer before Facebook, and had a number of successful projects under his belt. Facebook also took years to build, its growth was not anything like what Pinterest has been experiencing.

whats kind of successful projects he got under his belt? And define success -- monetary, or huge userbase, or both or what?

Mark (along with D'Angelo) developed Synapse (a media player) in high-school that learned what you listened to and created a playlist. They were being offered $1million to $2million for it.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/6/10/mark-e-zuckerber...

Re: The myth of the overnight success

#27

Two myths at play: 1. Overnight is never overnight. More probably you just never heard of it before. 2. If you just keep going you will eventually make it. But probably not. ( http://swombat.com/2012/3/10/successful-people ) Believe what you want and act accordingly.

I think the way to look at overnight success is that one can suddenly break through, but it's all about the painful preparation, and efforts that go into it usually for years beforehand.

Failure is a stage on the road to success, or else you do not survive it.

Re: The myth of the overnight success

#28
post #5

Anyone know of any examples of overnight success or close to it? Edit: Maybe Hot or Not?

If we're talking zero to crazy scale: Formspring.

They went from zero to 70 million daily pageviews in 90 days.

The domain Formspring.me was registered Nov 12, 2009. They hit 69 million pageviews on February 11, 2010. They did 1.8 billion pageviews that February.

Re: The myth of the overnight success

#29
post #22
post #13

One of my favorite examples is YouTube. They actually were about as close to "overnight success" as it gets. It was still something like a year and a half before they had significant traffic and most of us heard of them.

That's not accurate -- they launched the domain in Feb 2005; they uploaded the first video April 2005; they officially launched in November 2005; then Lazy Sunday went viral in December 2005. They were already well known before Lazy Sunday, but that tipped them over the edge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube YouTube the company was an overnight success, if anything can be called that. I wouldn't say the founders…

Depends how you define well know I guess. I think mid 2006 was when the world at large heard of them.

Re: The myth of the overnight success

#30
post #5

Anyone know of any examples of overnight success or close to it? Edit: Maybe Hot or Not?

To me "the biggest overnight success award" goes to Andrey Ternovskiy for Chatroulette. The site climbed high in rankings fast, quickly started generating profits, hundreds of clones came to life (of none of course got any traction although everyone was making it better ), you could buy the "roulette script" online and do your own site, and Andrey score a visa to US to work on some other startups, as far as I know. T…

The guy that sells pixels made 1M+ with http://milliondollarhomepage.com/

Basically he sells 1M "pixels" for $1 each to show advertisings. The pixels you buy have an expiration date so he probably sold more than 1M px. I read somewhere that it works pretty well and brings lots of users to advertisers, probably because of the press and the momentum generated around the service.

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