Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
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Re: Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
#2Simon Wardley has continued to evolve and refine the insights that led him to conceiving Zimki, and it is well worth any tech entrepreneur's time to take a look at the current iteration of "Wardley Mapping" to better understand how technologies (and platforms) evolve:
https://learnwardleymapping.com/book/
If Blank and Ries transformed our understanding of startup tactics, Wardley is improving our understanding of strategy.
Simon's account of the Zimki episode is in Chapter 5, if you just want a bit more detail: https://medium.com/wardleymaps/the-play-and-a-decision-to-ac...
Re: Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
#3> " One of the very first PaaS offerings in history actually belonged to Canon ... until it was abruptly killed by Canon itself"
There are dozens of examples of people being first to market and not winning (Canon). As so, what's so interesting about this article?
- Facebook won, when MySpace and others were first to market
- Google won, and it was crazy late to market over Yahoo/Altavista/Excite.
- Starbucks won, when plenty of other national coffee chains existed
etc
Re: Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
#4> " One of the very first PaaS offerings in history actually belonged to Canon ... until it was abruptly killed by Canon itself" There are dozens of examples of people being first to market and not winning (Canon). As so, what's so interesting about this article? - Facebook won, when MySpace and others were first to market - Google won, and it was crazy late to market over Yahoo/Altavista/Excite. - Starbucks won, whe…
What's an example of being first to market and winning a big market?
I can't think of any. First to market isn't the advantage that people think it is. It might be more important for smaller markets, perhaps.
Re: Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
#5> " One of the very first PaaS offerings in history actually belonged to Canon ... until it was abruptly killed by Canon itself" There are dozens of examples of people being first to market and not winning (Canon). As so, what's so interesting about this article? - Facebook won, when MySpace and others were first to market - Google won, and it was crazy late to market over Yahoo/Altavista/Excite. - Starbucks won, whe…
What's an example of being first to market and winning a big market? I can't think of any. First to market isn't the advantage that people think it is. It might be more important for smaller markets, perhaps.
Netflix, Uber, Amazon, PayPal, etc?
It's hard to exactly define "first to market." Was Google first to market because they were the first to have a search engine that functioned in the way theirs did, and should we put more primitive search engines in the same category?
Was Dropbox first to market? Did they win the market?
It often feels like a company is first to market, and then they win that market... and then maybe five or ten years later, an innovation comes along from a new company and they lose the market. That's just the way the market is supposed to work, and natural, but there's still an advantage to being first to market in having those years of market dominance.
Re: Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
#6> " One of the very first PaaS offerings in history actually belonged to Canon ... until it was abruptly killed by Canon itself" There are dozens of examples of people being first to market and not winning (Canon). As so, what's so interesting about this article? - Facebook won, when MySpace and others were first to market - Google won, and it was crazy late to market over Yahoo/Altavista/Excite. - Starbucks won, whe…
What's an example of being first to market and winning a big market? I can't think of any. First to market isn't the advantage that people think it is. It might be more important for smaller markets, perhaps.
Bell Telephone Company was first to the market and won. It's now known as AT&T.
Re: Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
#7> " One of the very first PaaS offerings in history actually belonged to Canon ... until it was abruptly killed by Canon itself" There are dozens of examples of people being first to market and not winning (Canon). As so, what's so interesting about this article? - Facebook won, when MySpace and others were first to market - Google won, and it was crazy late to market over Yahoo/Altavista/Excite. - Starbucks won, whe…
What's an example of being first to market and winning a big market? I can't think of any. First to market isn't the advantage that people think it is. It might be more important for smaller markets, perhaps.
The first commercial power plant in the US became Consolidated Edison which is still going 140 years later with a market cap of $27 billion.
Re: Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
#8> " One of the very first PaaS offerings in history actually belonged to Canon ... until it was abruptly killed by Canon itself" There are dozens of examples of people being first to market and not winning (Canon). As so, what's so interesting about this article? - Facebook won, when MySpace and others were first to market - Google won, and it was crazy late to market over Yahoo/Altavista/Excite. - Starbucks won, whe…
In general, the examples you cite are of early entrants being outcompeted by later entrants. Zimki was shut down despite (or because of?) it's success and experiencing he initial stages of hypergrowth. The successful PaaS entrants didn't show up until after Zimki had been defunct for a while.
You could also characterize this as "innovative startup strangled by acquiring behemoth or clueless greedy investors" which brings to mind a different set of examples, but that's not much more interesting.
What makes Zimki interesting IMO is that Simon Wardley successfully "timed the market" of technological change, clearly explained his thinking, and has since applied the same logic to make other correct predictions (or give good strategic advice).
Re: Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
#9Zimki was SO far ahead of its time - it was at least five years too early. Server-side JavaScript, Heroku-style PaaS, with its own object storage - back in 2006.
I was at the 2007 OSCON where Simon Wardley resigned on-stage after Canon changed their mind on open sourcing it. That was quite a moment!
Re: Zimki, the world's first Platform as a Service that belonged to Canon
#10Zimki was SO far ahead of its time - it was at least five years too early. Server-side JavaScript, Heroku-style PaaS, with its own object storage - back in 2006. I was at the 2007 OSCON where Simon Wardley resigned on-stage after Canon changed their mind on open sourcing it. That was quite a moment!
Same here.