Or so says Bijan Sabet, a long time VC whose investments include Tumblr and Twitter. I would say, timing has a lot to do with Facebook’s success too.
More people in more countries have computer, broadband connections, smartphones and wireless connections. Unlike MySpace, Facebook was able to thrive because of persistent broadband, better infrastructure technologies and smarter web software methodologies. More importantly, it had leadership that knew what was good enough for them to focus on (or imitate) in order to grow.
“Much has been written about the value of being a first mover in a given market. Or the importance of market timing. Or whatever some bullshit business school has to say on the matter.
But the reality is that it wasn’t that long ago where MySpace was massive and Facebook had a tiny fraction of their users. If memory serves, in 2006, MySpace had 7x the user base of Facebook.
Think about that.
It wasn’t market timing. It was execution. Facebook had a better team and a better product and they were able to keep pushing, and pushing with bold initiatives.
Lesson: there is a big opportunity when the market leader has a bad product” [Bijan Sabet ]
But it’s all depend how you play the game… it is not whom are you playing with…
Looking back even further to the original social networks from the 90ties: Classmates and PlanetAll (aquired by AMZN). Back in those days it wasn’t just lack of persistent broadband that held them back, but also few if any users owned digital cameras or picture phones. Imagine fb without pictures and without status updates since people only dial in a couple times a week.
You can be ten years to early
Gaurav
I don’t think I understand your comment. Please if you, elaborate.
W
right said. I think it is so true. Thanks for the comment.
I guess it’s both: Timing AND execution. Timing can be great luck (and in my opinion this happened to Facebook) but Execution is up to you and your team (my greatest respect to Mark Zuckerberg).