Pinterest’s Unlikely Journey To Top Of The Startup Mountain
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I actually use Pinterest myself to keep track of cool gadgets, books, and since I am in academia, papers, research, algorithms and ideas.
I've though about Pinterest's success for a while, and I think its special sauce has to do with permanence, where as most other sites are currently focused around recency. Posting an item to Pinterest feels additive: I am collecting and curating good content, and the entirety of my work is displayed for all to see in very few clicks. On the other extreme is Twitter/Facebook/Google+, where I've even stopped posting good content unless it falls in specific time on a weekday, or I know that it will sink into oblivion, never to be seen again. The time of a post can easily be the difference between 0 and 50+ retweets. (I tested this.)
The other major aspect of its success, I believe, is that Pinterest is very visual. This simple truth is obvious, but rarely executed on: People love pictures, and they don't like reading too much.
So Pinterest is doing many small things right, but more importantly it's filling a gap in people's desire to express themselves. Luckily, the team realized this and stubbornly believed it.
Respect to them for having the fortitude and not giving up.
It took us 2.5 years to get to product market fit. We raised a seed round and kept burn incredibly low for a long time while we figured things out. There were a couple of product adjustments along to way based on customer demand.
It took us 2.5 years, to reach out first million of recurring sales. It'll take us less than 3 months now to double that. Patience certainly is a virtue.
I think you have a great product (trust me, I don't say that often)! It sounds like your biggest problem is distribution/marketing – I'd never heard of Skills before your comment and I've been looking for recruiting software. Perhaps you could do some deal with a job board where companies can choose to have applicants apply through you. Also, it'd be nice if applicants could list their HN profile as well.
Good luck!
I hope your software is never taken seriously.
Sorry I don't have a github account or a blog but I was too busy making sure Google search actually works.
After all, sometimes ideas don't fail because of the idea, they fail because of execution or sales or marketing. In which case moving on to a new idea is not going to yield any better results. People should stick with their current idea while learning all the other stuff they need to know to succeed and stop blaming the idea.
"Don't look for the next opportunity. The one you have in hand is the opportunity." -Paul Arden
I don't think it's easier. It's just that when you're stuck on your current idea, creating a new idea _seems_ easier - but it's a false economy.
> apply it to insert hot market here
I don't chase what other people are doing, that's for the samwer brothers ;) (although let's not forget they have multi-millions so they are probably successful by their own defenition)