Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon" • Hacker News Board

Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"

#31

Post by skore » Tue, Dec 27, 2011, 3:27 PM UTC

hello_moto wrote: post #7

skore wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? I still use ICQ and various xmpp accounts, plus skype. Had an MSN account a while back, but only for two friends who ended up switching away from it. Yes, Microsoft bought skype, but that's not really "breaking into", that's "buying". You wouldn't say that Microsoft "broke into the FPS market by making Halo".

All of my friends switched from ICQ to MSN. The switch happened kind of fast too. Especially during the XP and hotmail era. XP comes with windows messenger pre-installed. Not to mentioned the whole Windows Live ID thingie.

I think the introduction of Windows/Xbox Live was the driving force that pushed it in the triple digits million userbase here, not an actual decision to switch to MSN. If all of your friends are suddenly on another service, it's no wonder you'll switch eventually.

Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"

#32

Post by wccrawford » Tue, Dec 27, 2011, 6:38 PM UTC

FaceKicker wrote: post #22

How does Amazon have a "strong network effect"? I'd still use it even if none of my friends did; it's not like Facebook (or instant messaging networks, to use the 11-year old example from the article) where my friends not using it would render it useless (or even less useful). The only things I can think of is that (1) customers will advertise for you by word-of-mouth, and (2) it's cheaper per user the more users you…

I don't think it's what he was talking about, but Amazon also has their 'Prime' service which means free 2-day deliver on every item in their warehouses.

For me, that means I'm -way- more likely to buy from Amazon than anyone else, because it's both free and 2-day delivery. Yes, I pay $80 per year for the privilege, but that's still way cheaper than what I used to pay for shipping before Prime, and I always chose the 5-7 day option.

Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"

#33

Post by HalibetLector » Tue, Dec 27, 2011, 7:25 PM UTC

niklas_a wrote: post #12

The problem with this post, and other pieces by Spolsky is that he creates an example out of two extremes on what really is a sliding scale. Amazon burned through a lot of capital. B&J grew slowly during decades. In real life, things are seldom so black and white. Every company has a unique story. What about Facebook, that grew organically at first and then took on massive investment once it was clear that college ki…

I couldn't agree more.

Facebook started college only and had no competition in that space, so they did well but had the luxury to expand slowly, essentially the B&J model in the article. When it was obvious the next step was to open themselves to the public at large, the social network lockin effect worked against them. Everyone at the time was using MySpace or Friendster or whatever else was popular at the time (I honestly don't remember). In order to make a dent, they had to hit hard and fast, so they took some funding and exploded out of the gate.

The point I'm trying to make is, Facebook mixed both the Amazon and the B&J model for growing a company. They did one, then the other, which really made sense for them considering the position they were in at the time.

Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"

#34

Post by niklas_a » Tue, Dec 27, 2011, 11:21 PM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #18

niklas_a wrote: post #12

The problem with this post, and other pieces by Spolsky is that he creates an example out of two extremes on what really is a sliding scale. Amazon burned through a lot of capital. B&J grew slowly during decades. In real life, things are seldom so black and white. Every company has a unique story. What about Facebook, that grew organically at first and then took on massive investment once it was clear that college ki…

"""The problem with this post, and other pieces by Spolsky is that he creates an example out of two extremes on what really is a sliding scale. Amazon burned through a lot of capital. B&J grew slowly during decades. In real life, things are seldom so black and white.""" Maybe, but shades of gray are neither guiding principles nor reference points. We measure shades of gray as 10% white or 20% black etc, i.e distances…

"Science works with generalization and taxonomy."

You still need to do the science though. Taking two examples and drawing general conclusions from that is just wrong. It's a case study of how B&J and Amazon have operated, which in itself is interesting.

But it's wrong to state that you either are a B&J-type company or an Amazon-type company, nothing in the article supports the fact that those are the only possible types.