Great article. I think Gowalla would have had a better chance if they aggressively pursued the things foursquare wasn't doing, like conquering Europe for instance. I always had the feeling none of the two companies was trying hard enough in Europe.
Play by Your Own Rules
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: Play by Your Own Rules
#32Offtopic: is Medium a curated blogging site or a service that has yet to launch? The articles are great, but their about page[1] is unhelpful. [1] https://medium.com/about/9e53ca408c48
It's a blogging site that is in beta. Writers are invite-only. I see some parallels to Svbtle.
Re: Play by Your Own Rules
#33I'm not saying Gowalla originally copied Foursquare, but this blog post got me wondering - What are some notable examples of a "copycat" startup actually overtaking the original "innovator" startup? Because I'm having trouble thinking of any off the top of my head. (And I'm not talking about cases like Facebook overtaking MySpace or Google overtaking Yahoo where a fundamentally different company overtook a long-domin…
Spreadsheets and word processors are good examples. Visicalc was overtaken by Lotus 1-2-3 which was overtaken by Excel. WordPerfect was overtaken by Microsoft Word.
Re: Play by Your Own Rules
#34Love the honesty. Not always great to chase competitors in a market that isn't even clearly a winner. Foursquare won the check-in race but now after all that time they're trying to rebrand away from the check-in, since the check-in business is still kind of niche. But hopefully the data turns into something meaningful.
I think branding did have some impact on Foursquare becoming more popular than Gowalla, too.
At least the name "Foursquare" consists of real English words that mean something on their own. This isn't true for "Gowalla". It looks and sounds like gibberish.
A few years back, when this area was picking up, a co-worker of mine was talking to us over lunch about these different services. He could remember the name Foursquare right away, but not Gowalla. While trying to remember Gowalla's name, he said that it sounded like "Gorilla", but it was something different. It was only about a week or so later that I figured out he was talking about Gowalla, after seeing it mentioned somewhere else.
I wouldn't be surprised if other people couldn't remember Gowalla's name, as well.
Re: Play by Your Own Rules
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you're someone that uses a throw away account to call out someone. Nice . [EDIT] The downvotes are for not adding value to the discussion here. Your initial post was only a one-line hateful comment. Nice try updating it with an unmarked edit.
Just focus on what I write and not on who I am. Excuse my harsh words, but HN is for tech founders, for real entrepreneurs. This is just the wrong place for someone who was once a founder but is now employed for years (and writing such confusing posts). EDIT: I am not sure who is spreading the hate here. Instead of distracting with mentioning "unmarked edits" just try to comment on the content of my post (which is ab…
You can be employed and still be entrepreneur, definitions from Wikipedia:
"1934: Schumpeter: Entrepreneurs are innovators who use a process of shattering the status quo of the existing products and services, to set up new products, new services."
"1983: G. Pinchot: Intrapreneur is an entrepreneur within an already established organization."
Re: Play by Your Own Rules
#36I'm not saying Gowalla originally copied Foursquare, but this blog post got me wondering - What are some notable examples of a "copycat" startup actually overtaking the original "innovator" startup? Because I'm having trouble thinking of any off the top of my head. (And I'm not talking about cases like Facebook overtaking MySpace or Google overtaking Yahoo where a fundamentally different company overtook a long-domin…
If you look from an international perspective, there are companies started in Europe that did much better in the european markets than the "original" product. The end result is pretty much that the "original" had to buy out the clone. For example Groupon buying MyCityDeal The Samwer brothers are experts at this http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/04/features/ins...
> "...did much better in the european markets"
Yes, but this is partly due to the (arguably) slow expansion of hot US startups into overseas markets. The Samwer brothers basically took an approach of copying successful US startups, so in some sense they can bootstrap some of the learning from the predecessor, while never having to directly compete (until the original decides to expand).
Re: Play by Your Own Rules
#37You can't really blame them for taking the path they chose. Check-ins were what the market wanted at that time. Gowalla was guaranteed to be building for a market that existed. Yes, they could have said, "Screw check-ins, let's focus on photos", but that would have been a much bigger risk than going to war with an equally early staged startup. Imagine if they would have drastically pivoted away from check-ins and fai…
Actually, you can, which was the point of his essay: focus on validating your vision, rather than being reactive to someone else's actions. They were too focused on being reactive to a competitor, rather than really understanding their users. Because if you just copy whatever your competitor is doing, you're getting the understanding of your users second-hand, and you might end up copying things that aren't important…
The harder part is really looking at your users, how they use the product, what they want - but not what they say they want. With my product, we have people requesting features of the 'big dog' - only because that's what they've seen. We're not about to blindly implement what a competitor does just because they did it - it's assuming they did the research into that feature, and we don't have to.
Anyway, essentially - it's really hard to not copy a competitor when that's all your users are vocally asking for is to do just that.
Re: Play by Your Own Rules
#38I'm not saying Gowalla originally copied Foursquare, but this blog post got me wondering - What are some notable examples of a "copycat" startup actually overtaking the original "innovator" startup? Because I'm having trouble thinking of any off the top of my head. (And I'm not talking about cases like Facebook overtaking MySpace or Google overtaking Yahoo where a fundamentally different company overtook a long-domin…
Just about everything Zynga makes is a copy that overtakes the original.
Re: Play by Your Own Rules
#39I'm not saying Gowalla originally copied Foursquare, but this blog post got me wondering - What are some notable examples of a "copycat" startup actually overtaking the original "innovator" startup? Because I'm having trouble thinking of any off the top of my head. (And I'm not talking about cases like Facebook overtaking MySpace or Google overtaking Yahoo where a fundamentally different company overtook a long-domin…
Just about everything Zynga makes is a copy that overtakes the original.
Except their share price!
Re: Play by Your Own Rules
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, anyone who has a job shouldn't be on HN? Dude, I think think the vast majority of the HN community is employed by someone else. You can be into hacking and technology without being an entrepreneur.
> I think think the vast majority of the HN community is employed by someone else. I don't think so. HN is YC is full of real entrepreneurs and risk takers. Most on HN are tech founders or at least employed but with having side projects and ambitions to get real founders. The OP is working at Facebook, proud of being an employee and having no side projects (otherwise he wouldn't blog about Gowalla years later).
Just curious, how old are you?
Please respond.