Stealing Traction: How Youtube, Paypal, AirBnB grew through piggybacking | Hacker News Reader

Stealing Traction: How Youtube, Paypal, AirBnB grew through piggybacking

medium.com

150 pointskhadim27 comments

The classic startup article fallacy. Let's look at these group of winning startups (from the somewhat distant past) and then find some commonalities and then make them a general guide for startups today. Without looking at the losers, you have no idea what characteristics of the "winning" startup was actually the most important. I have no doubt that for every one company that succeeded at one of these bullet points, ten failed doing something similar. That isn't to say the ideas are bad, but the fact that one startup succeeded doing them doesn't mean it is good.

Also why is everybody so afraid to mention luck in posts like these? I think if you build a product for a new web browser, and that browser becomes the #1 browser on the internet, that is pretty lucky. Yes, there is a ton of skill there too, but also a ton of luck.

I'm not saying the lessons in this post are necessarily bad, but statements like "This is how networked products achieve viral growth" and "So here’s the secret" are just hyperbole, nothing more.

we, humans tend to believe that we do better because of purposeful action, or reason and exclude luck as a non-intelligent way to act on our environment. growth always has many dynamics and still appears like luck, magic, alchemy or connections. all these posts are attempts to raise it to the level of actionable knowledge.

"The classic startup article fallacy."

Also classic medium.com type article or for that matter many things that end up on HN. Someone says something (many times you don't even know who they are) and then there is a comment frenzy of people feasting on said article.

One of my first thoughts was who is "Sangeet Paul Choudary" and why should I pay attention to anything he is saying? What is unique about his perspective vs. anyone elses?

"Without looking at the losers, you have no idea what characteristics of the "winning" startup was actually the most important. "

Agree 100%. Same as "Steve Jobs did X and that's why" w/o knowing all the people who did X that achieved squat. No control group. Or (as you pointed out with regards to "luck") being Steve Jobs in the right place at the right time.

The classic HN reader fallacy.

Listen to someone because of who they are (especially within HN) rather than what they have to say.

I worked at RockYou.com in its heyday, which was when we had the #1 app on facebook, Superwall.

Superwall used exactly one of the strategies outlined in this article: Fix one of the pain points on a platform. The platform was Facebook, the pain point was sharing images and videos with your friends.

Facebook decided that sharing images and videos with your friends was a good idea, perhaps because they saw our success with it.

Superwall died. Rockyou pivoted into something totally different. A couple down-rounds of funding (I think).

"Take on the pain points of a platform" is usually referred to as "Don't try to beat the platform at being the platform".

Eh, that's the catch with building on platforms. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

I don't think the intent is to say that this is the only way it works. It's probably just to show these are the common patterns while piggybacking. The luck bit goes without saying.

Agreed. Timing also plays a vital part.

However, I generally find articles like these, which state the obvious with the benefit of hindsight do not really impart any new knowledge, thus are a waste of time.

Within the bounds of that article, the author's points are fairly valid. I mean he hasn't emphasized piggybacking as the one ring to rule them all.

For a new startup these are good lessons to learn from. Of course, there is always a danger in building your business atop a competitor platform but if your timing and execution is such that the parent platform can't outdo you right away you can do a decent amount of business.

A new one that I don't see mentioned much is Imgur + Reddit. Imgur started as means to share images on Reddit, but has since developed their own community, commenting system, etc that directly competes with them.

So there are 2 cases. First one is when a startup offers a brilliant product with the 'wow' and 'aha' moments. It spreads like crazy. Second one is when a startup with less striking product comes, executes well, pivots a lot and steals networked users from established ones.

In all cases once a startup becomes dominant, it starts limiting and throttling their APIs fearing others obsoleting themselves. So the lesson, is to find a new grownup startup, which is not yet defensively throttling its platform or not yet pursuing ultimate monetization of its network.

The title is a bit off in my opinion. AirBnB could be said to have stolen Craigslist's traction, but that really doesn't apply to examples like Youtube making sharing videos possible on MySpace. Youtube added value to MySpace and made it a better platform; AirBnB on the other hand added value to landlords and tenants - at the expense of Craigslist.

It's a subtle difference, but I would call it "siphoning traffic."

"It’s important to note that Craigslist doesn’t allow external services to post listings there and Airbnb had to go out of its way to simulate that feature."

The author might make a good politician.

These claims always make me wonder: do sites really expect others to follow their rules (assuming nothing is signed to make such contracts binding legally?) if one is technically able to subvert them or are these in place to cover their own six?

There was a similar discussion on a similar story 14 days back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6268430

Incidentally, written by the same author! Great stuff!

Imgur is also a good example of this (piggybacking on reddit)

Youtube to Myspace does not seem like the same as the other comparisons. Myspace is/was a social network and better in-page videos -- no matter where they are served from - would only make Myspace more appealing because of how they catered to music bands. to say that Youtube stole Myspace's traction is like saying imgur stole Reddit's traction when instead, it's more likely that imgur's great service accelerated Reddit's popularity (at least with memes...I'm talking quantity, not quality :)) -- and vice versa. There was no reason that couldn't have happened with myspace/youtube

Yeah, as the other commenter says, 'siphoning' is probably better though it is still stealing if you don't think of traffic as a zero-sum game. It's after all only in zero-sum games like physical goods that stealing reduces value to the owner.

This is tangentially related, but here is less OT than in most discussions :)

I'm currently building http://www.bandol.it, a Humble Bundle clone targeted at Italian Independent Music (and, maybe, books).

I'm experiencing the dreaded chicken and egg problem: bands won't give me their music if I don't have a big following, while people won't follow me if I don't offer them good bands.

How did Humble Bundle solve this?

The people behind Humble Bundle were indie developers themselves, they were already established in the industry so they had their own games to use (which were popular) and had industry connections.

Right. The solution is to go make friends in the industry.

Consider a change in perspective - instead of asking "how can I make Humble Bundle model stick with my target audience", ask yourself "what can I do for my target audience that generates obvious value?". Hang out with the bands, hang out with the listeners, keep looking for other important players (labels, radio stations, venue managers, event organizers, government employees driving "persevere out culture" type of programs, politicians who are focusing on culture, etc).

If you spend enough time with the crowd and keep an open mind about it you are guaranteed to find something you can add to the table.

I think you've internalized a too-specific rule. Translate "bands won't give me their music if I don't have a big following" to "bands won't give me their music unless they trust me to do right by them and their music." Having a large following among people the musicians want to reach is one way to earn that trust. There are others.

I'm always amused by the way that what's old is always treated as new when it comes to online/digital marketing. While the methods may be different, brand positioning has always involved using the attributes, features and (especially) short-comings and weaknesses of the market players.

And the idea of "piggybacking" on other services that you know that users want isn't really new either... It's why Coke is the only cola you can get at certain baseball stadiums - Coke knows that people will come to the stadium and buy drinks, and they're "piggybacking" on that to drive demand in general.

No, no one's claiming that anything is new. The fundamental rules of business do not change. What does change is that all this happens in a world of perpetual connectivity now and so some of the frictions go down, metrics become more trackable and the whole process becomes more controllable. So yes, some things do change.

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