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HOUSEKEEPING 📨

Well, after last edition’s poll asking if you’d like me to write breakdowns of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I got a somewhat of a lukewarm response. Hear me out, though: I love Bill Simmons, the best sports commentator in the world. But what I love even more is The Ringer’s (Bill Simmons brand) Rewatchables, where Bill and his friends break down the best films and series.

But I’m busy, so it’s okay anyway. Not the time for it. For now, I will just continue to work in Game of Thrones references in my business and tech writing (like the one you’ll see in this one). Anyway, enjoy the piece!

BUSINESS STORY 🗞️

Your First Product Will Be A Dumpster Fire

Let’s face it, you never start off being truly great at something. Unless you’re a child prodigy with the skills of baby-faced assassin Kevin McCallister, there’s a 99% chance that when you dive into something new, you’ll probably suck, and suck badly.

But you’re not alone. Even the brands we know and love today started out as steaming piles of startup excrement. They didn’t come out of the incorporational* womb as multi-billion dollar mega-companies. Most of them started in garages or stinky college dorms.

_{*Incorporational is a new word I am testing out right now.}

But it is hard to imagine that some of the biggest companies in the world today started the same way we all did. They started at the bottom. Mere mortals. With nothing more than a dream to ‘make it’ on the big stage.

So today, let’s take a dig into some of the biggest brands’ ugly pasts so we can all feel a little better about ourselves. If you’re thinking of starting a business, just remember, it’s supposed to be shitty in the beginning. You just have to trust that it is all part of the process.

Odeo, later Twitter cum X

Unfortunately for the Odeo team, Apple made the announcement in 2005 that iTunes would also function as a podcasting platform. Faced with a do-or-die moment, one of Odeo’s star employees, Jack Dorsey, came up with a fresh microblogging concept—a way to share status updates via SMS—and named it Twttr. Vowels were apparently uncool back in the early 2000s. Along with the new concept, a new logo was born.

Despite the logo being one of the all-time facepalms, Twttr started gaining massive traction only a month after launching its new concept. The rest is history. The company changed to a blue logo, which eventually evolved into a blue bird, and became one of the most-used social media platforms in the world.

From failed app to a global powerhouse, Twitter proves to be a great case for just getting started. If Odeo remained an idea in the back of the founder’s head, we’d likely never have Twitter, and hashtags would be just pound signs, not the cultural touchstones they are today.

任天堂株式会社 (Nintendo)

The year is 1889. There is no TV, no Netflix, no YouTube. It may seem unimaginable today, but there was a time when the only form of entertainment was in-person events or hangouts.

One of the most popular forms of entertainment back in ye olden days was playing cards. And that’s where video game giant Nintendo got its start.

It’s hard to imagine Nintendo being associated with something other than moustachioed (/məˈstɑːʃɪəʊd/) plumbers and barrel-tossing apes, but for close to 100 years they made their way in cards then late toys, finally hitting it big when Shigeru Miyamoto created the arcade version of Donkey Kong in 1981.

YouTube and its dating roots

Everyone’s favourite video-sharing platform, YouTube, the place where boredom goes to die, and the leading source of procrastination around the globe, originally started as a hookup site.

The idea was to create a video-dating site that would allow users to upload videos of themselves talking about their ideal partners, helping them find a match. That idea was scrapped when the founders discovered users were interested in uploading a variety of content.

The first video on the platform was jawed’s Me at the zoo video. Since then, a billion uploads have followed. The decision to pivot to a general video-sharing website transformed the company from a niche dating platform into the second-largest search engine in the world today.

A game Glitch-ed and became Slack

It’s rare that a company name becomes a commonly used verb in company speak, but that’s exactly what Slack did. Hard to believe that the phrase “I’ll slack it to you” didn’t exist a decade ago.

But even Slack has a past that didn’t pan out the way they originally intended. Slack was internal tooling in a completely different industry: gaming.

Funnily enough, this was actually Slack’s founder’s second attempt at a video game. The first attempt also failed as a game but resulted in the popular photo-sharing website Flickr. Glitch was eventually launched, but there was a huge problem. It was boring.

Early reviews said it was too complicated and not worth the effort it took to learn the mechanics. Ouch. So Stewart Butterfield, Glitch’s founder, did what he already had experience doing once before. He pivoted. Because his last ‘failure’ resulted in a $35 million acquisition, the expectations were that he could do it again.

The story goes that while working on Glitch, the engineers developed their own messaging system that was more flexible and user-friendly than email. The executive team saw the value it had created for them and decided to take the idea to the enterprise software market. The pivot worked out, and enterprise communications were changed forever.

The pivot worked out, and the way teams communicated around the world was changed forever.

Game of Thrones draft: Jon marries Arya

Our examples of fateful pivots don’t only exist in business and tech. They also exist in the make-believe worlds and fantasy lands we hold dear. One famous example was George RR Martin’s original outline for A Song of Ice & Fire.

In George’s original outline, he had Jon and half-sister Arya falling madly in love. He also planned to have Sansa happily marry Prince Joffrey and join the Lannisters as an heir to Cersei’s ‘worst woman in the world crown.’

For all fans of the series, you probably cannot imagine a world where Jon and Arya get together. It just wouldn’t have felt right. But it existed for a brief moment in the imagination of George. I can only imagine what old Eddard would have thought.

Facemash, → Facebook → Meta

Meta was another to start with a controversial concept. The site, then called Facemash, was designed to rate students' looks at Harvard. The school, to no one’s surprise, quickly shut down the website, but Zuck and friends were encouraged by the traffic and looked for ways to pivot.

Facemash then would turn into Facebook, a social networking site that connected college students on a more meaningful level. Quite the pivot. From a superficial and judgmental concept to one supposedly based on purposeful connections.

The pivot worked. Facebook exploded in popularity, expanding beyond its original target, Harvard, and becoming—alongside Myspace—one of the premier social networks in the world almost immediately. Meta is worth $1.2 trillion dollars today.

Shopify for snowboards

They say the best way to start a company is to solve your own problems. That’s exactly what the founders of Shopify did. The idea first came into existence when the founder, Tobias Lütke, launched an online store called Snowdevil to sell snowboarding equipment with a few friends. They saw a huge need for a better e-commerce experience, and Lütke got to work building one.

Despite its simple layout and plain visuals compared to today’s websites, Shopify’s main breadwinner was its customisation. Stores had greater flexibility to track their customers, add design elements to their pages, and overall drive more revenue than other options on the market.

That focus on customisation, along with a relentless focus on customer experience, is how Shopify became a $10 billion dollar business. All because the founder wanted to find a better way to sell a few snowboards.

Netflix & DVDs

Last but not least, one of the greatest pivots of all: Netflix's wild transformation from a DVD rental service to a global streaming giant. "Don't be afraid to change the model," Reed Hastings would go on to say. To borrow the energy of Eleanor Roosevelt, all I can say here is, ‘Poor Blockbuster.’

In sum

If you take nothing else away from these examples, just remember that we all start in the same position. There’s a hidden past to every success, marked by many failures and pivots. The ‘overnight success’ we see has mountains of late nights, stress, and doubts in its rear-view mirror.

But there is one common denominator with all these stories of success. The founders got started. And then they just kept going. Moving forward. One pivot at a time.

Other fun pivots

• Instagram: Originally launched as Burbn, a mobile check-in app, Instagram pivoted to focus exclusively on photo sharing, a move that catalysed its rapid growth and made it one of the most popular social media platforms.

• Wrigley: Started as a company that sold soap and baking powder, Wrigley pivoted to selling chewing gum, which was offered as a free promotional item with its original products. This pivot led to the Wrigley chewing gum empire.

• PayPal: Initially started as a cryptography company, then shifted to money transfers. This pivot eventually turned PayPal into the global leader in online payment solutions.

• Groupon: Initially launched as The Point, a platform for organising social causes and fundraising. It pivoted to offering daily deals and discounts, which significantly grew its user base and market impact.

Extra reading

• The art of the pivot: The definitive list of successful pivots - March, 2024

• The art of the pivot: How, why, and when to pivot - May, 2024

• Before Mario Website - Undated

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