11–20 of 34 posts
Zimki 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!
Zimki 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!
Must have been incredible to see that unfold in real time... I can only imagine!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
... and Verizon, and a few others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 may…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 may…
Not sure if Netflix was first to DVD by mail, quite possibly; they were early, and I don't know if VHS rental by mail was ever a thing.
Uber may have been the first to internet hail livery vehicles, but Sidecar was the first to do internet ridesharing as an app, and Lyft was the first to call unlicensed taxi service ridesharing. Uber is winning in the marketplace at the moment though and Sidecar is dead; of course, winning in this market still means burning money.
Amazon was early to selling books on the web, but e-commerce catalog sales were available on pre-Internet information services. AWS defined a new category of managed hosting, but lots of other companies did similar things before.
I think BillPoint may have slightly predated PayPal. Being early here seems to have had staying power, as Yahoo's PayDirect didn't do well enough to stick around. Otoh, Venmo was good enough to buy, Zelle seems popular, and other easy credit card processors like Square and such seem to be winning over that side of PayPal's market. There's a moat, but it's not very deep.
> Was Dropbox first to market? Did they win the market?
No, there was XDrive and Yahoo Briefcase and probably more that launched and shutdown before Dropbox. Not sure if Dropbox won, OneDrive and Google Drive are contenders still.
> " 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…
Facebook had a valuable userbase and a polished product (it looked good, no templates and music on auto-play)
> Google won, and it was crazy late to market over Yahoo/Altavista/Excite.
Google had a better product, plain simple.
> Starbucks won, when plenty of other national coffee chains existed
Starbucks won partly because it had "Italian coffee". Nobody else had espresso machines in as many locations as they did.
> " 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 br…
Has Wardley mentioned why they didn't pursue the start-up route (like Eric Yuan at zoom.us did; or Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes at SnowflakeDB did, to give recent examples)?
Zimki 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!
Must have been incredible to see that unfold in real time... I can only imagine!
Amazingly powerful moment because everyone there empathised with the experience of being on the right technical track to do something amazing but management not getting it. His frustration was under control, but palpable. And ("anticlimactic" reply in this thread notwithstanding) it was clear we were witnessing something we weren't going to see again.
> " 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…
> Facebook won, when MySpace and others were first to market Facebook had a valuable userbase and a polished product (it looked good, no templates and music on auto-play) > Google won, and it was crazy late to market over Yahoo/Altavista/Excite. Google had a better product, plain simple. > Starbucks won, when plenty of other national coffee chains existed Starbucks won partly because it had "Italian coffee". Nobody e…
Yes exactly. Here in Melbourne (where we have a culture of European style espresso everywhere), Starbucks has barely been able to get a foothold in the market.