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Consumer businesses are hard. Bootstrapping a network is hard. Taking attention away from competing apps is hard. Dealing with skeptics is hard. Yet, this team

Consumer businesses are hard. Bootstrapping a network is hard. Taking attention away from competing apps is hard. Dealing with skeptics is hard. Yet, this team is one of the few that have succeeded at all of these challenges before. I'm excited to watch how they build this business. Success is uncertain, but observing their actions will be a case study in growth tactics.

baxtr 4y ago
I agree. But I would like to add: ANY business is hard. Not only B2C.
- bmitc 4y ago
  Are social media apps/platforms really B2C? Aren't they more B2B?
  - hackitup7 4y ago
    They're fundamentally B2C because the hardest part is getting the consumer virality engine running. Once the consumers are there, the B2B part (eg the ads engine) is relatively easy. I won't say trivial, but I would guess literally 2-3 orders of magnitude easier if you have a large and engaged audience. B2C success is the rate-limiting step.
    - mritchie712 4y ago
      Agreed, the b2b part is simple. It's a lot of work, but it's something you can hire people to do and follow a playbook. There's no playbook you can run to make a social app go viral.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > fundamentally B2C because the hardest part is getting the consumer virality engine running. Once the consumers are there, the B2B part (eg the ads engine) is relatively easy Social media is neither. Ben Thompson's aggregator aside from the B2C/B dichotomy shines in this example. Snap and Twitter notoriously struggled with ad sales, for example.
      - gardenhedge 4y ago
        How do the struggle so much? They have a large, engaged audience. Seems like it should be straight forward?
        lancesells 4y ago
        I think the struggle is people don't respond (convert) on those platforms for whatever reasons that are inherit to their audiences or the app itself. If users don't convert then businesses aren't going to spend on ads. I work in marketing and Twitter has always been hard to have any sort of positive return on. Big brands can afford that but the millions of smaller businesses can't.
      - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        Twitter was doing $5 bill pa of ad sales... Snap is doing over $4 bill pa. Twitter was sold for ~$40 bill, Snap is currently at $18 bill market cap. That isn't notoriously struggling. The statement that the ad component is relatively easy is borne out by the facts. There are zero companies doing lots of ad revenue with very few users, and practically every service with hundreds of millions to billions of users spending their time looking at said service is doing significant ad revenue. The only way one can think they struggled is if compared to the two wildly outlying, greatest ad revenue machines in the history of the world.
  - adql 4y ago
    B2C to acquire the product (userbase), B2B to sell it
- ericmcer 4y ago
  B2C is definitely a bigger technical challenge, B2B is a sales challenge. B2C people expect perfection for free and will balk at the slightest complication.
  - thisgoesnowhere 4y ago
    Also consumers are very hard to monetize at scale whereas business will throw money at things that solve problems.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Unfortunately I have seen that past success is not a measure of future success when it comes to consumer driven networks. So I am willing to bet a farm that this will be hyped by the tech community who are their friends but then it will slowly fizzle out.
tootie 4y ago
Content moderation is hard
naasking 4y ago
> Yet, this team is one of the few that have succeeded at all of these challenges before. Don't underestimate luck, it causes you to overestimate your own abilities. Thousands of other startups with seemingly great ideas, equally smart founders and equally "sound" business plans all failed. Some of the survivors of these competitions will have won due to their savvy, but plenty will have won from sheer dumb luck (survivorship bias).
- size12font 4y ago
  Don't under estimate all the bad luck that happened to them as well. Your point is 100% valid all those startups look great on paper and fail. That also means startups that do NOT sound sound might be the next big thing.
  - naasking 4y ago
    Agreed! That's why we have the saying of something being "ahead of its time", an idea that failed at its time but later succeeded when circumstances were more favourable.

baxtr 4y ago

I agree. But I would like to add: ANY business is hard. Not only B2C.

bmitc 4y ago
Are social media apps/platforms really B2C? Aren't they more B2B?
- hackitup7 4y ago
  They're fundamentally B2C because the hardest part is getting the consumer virality engine running. Once the consumers are there, the B2B part (eg the ads engine) is relatively easy. I won't say trivial, but I would guess literally 2-3 orders of magnitude easier if you have a large and engaged audience. B2C success is the rate-limiting step.
  - mritchie712 4y ago
    Agreed, the b2b part is simple. It's a lot of work, but it's something you can hire people to do and follow a playbook. There's no playbook you can run to make a social app go viral.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > fundamentally B2C because the hardest part is getting the consumer virality engine running. Once the consumers are there, the B2B part (eg the ads engine) is relatively easy Social media is neither. Ben Thompson's aggregator aside from the B2C/B dichotomy shines in this example. Snap and Twitter notoriously struggled with ad sales, for example.
    - gardenhedge 4y ago
      How do the struggle so much? They have a large, engaged audience. Seems like it should be straight forward?
      - lancesells 4y ago
        I think the struggle is people don't respond (convert) on those platforms for whatever reasons that are inherit to their audiences or the app itself. If users don't convert then businesses aren't going to spend on ads. I work in marketing and Twitter has always been hard to have any sort of positive return on. Big brands can afford that but the millions of smaller businesses can't.
    - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
      Twitter was doing $5 bill pa of ad sales... Snap is doing over $4 bill pa. Twitter was sold for ~$40 bill, Snap is currently at $18 bill market cap. That isn't notoriously struggling. The statement that the ad component is relatively easy is borne out by the facts. There are zero companies doing lots of ad revenue with very few users, and practically every service with hundreds of millions to billions of users spending their time looking at said service is doing significant ad revenue. The only way one can think they struggled is if compared to the two wildly outlying, greatest ad revenue machines in the history of the world.
- adql 4y ago
  B2C to acquire the product (userbase), B2B to sell it
ericmcer 4y ago
B2C is definitely a bigger technical challenge, B2B is a sales challenge. B2C people expect perfection for free and will balk at the slightest complication.
- thisgoesnowhere 4y ago
  Also consumers are very hard to monetize at scale whereas business will throw money at things that solve problems.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

Unfortunately I have seen that past success is not a measure of future success when it comes to consumer driven networks. So I am willing to bet a farm that this will be hyped by the tech community who are their friends but then it will slowly fizzle out.

tootie 4y ago

Content moderation is hard

naasking 4y ago

> Yet, this team is one of the few that have succeeded at all of these challenges before. Don't underestimate luck, it causes you to overestimate your own abilities. Thousands of other startups with seemingly great ideas, equally smart founders and equally "sound" business plans all failed. Some of the survivors of these competitions will have won due to their savvy, but plenty will have won from sheer dumb luck (survivorship bias).

size12font 4y ago
Don't under estimate all the bad luck that happened to them as well. Your point is 100% valid all those startups look great on paper and fail. That also means startups that do NOT sound sound might be the next big thing.
- naasking 4y ago
  Agreed! That's why we have the saying of something being "ahead of its time", an idea that failed at its time but later succeeded when circumstances were more favourable.