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> "Every moment in business happens only once." -- Peter Thiel Sounds smart, but doesn't mean anything.

by shafyy 3y ago

starttoaster 3y ago
It sounds like what it's intending to get across is that there are market conditions that lead to a product taking off, and market conditions by nature change, which means a product taking off today doesn't necessarily mean that the same product would take off tomorrow. So I'm curious about your opinion. How does it mean nothing to you?
nostrademons 3y ago
It's actually pretty profound for a certain audience, and that audience overlaps pretty heavily with HN. A lot of people expect to gain lessons about what'll work in the future by studying the past. They'll point to successful product X, and then build product Y that tries to replicate all the good parts of product X, and not realize that there are a lot of subtle interactions between a product and the social & environmental conditions of its audience that lead to it taking off. If you build the same product but the environment is different, you get different results. Similarly, it's a lesson to pay very careful attention to what's going on in the environment today, and index more on that than what has worked with the environment of the past. That's why good VC presentations always have a slide for "What has changed? Why is this a good idea now when it wasn't in the past?"
swalling 3y ago
A less grandiose version of this aphorism: timing the market matters just as much as what product you ship. People tend to focus on product attributes and pricing because compared to timing, it is more in your control. An example of this that I think about a lot is Zoom. Zoom nailed video/audio quality more than most of other competing products, but otherwise they didn't offer anything that new compared to legions of other enterprise A/V platforms. They just happened to offer unlimited free meetings for <= 100 participants right as the pandemic happened. This was all pretty much lucky timing and some good choices around freemium growth mechanics. This window of opportunity closed quickly for competing products as behavior changed and network effects took hold. The only new competitor that emerged mid-pandemic was Teams, because MSFT could literally force install it on every Windows machine.
- IcyWindows 3y ago
  Do you mean the consumer version? The enterprise version has been around and available for subscription with the other office products before the pandemic.
  - swalling 3y ago
    If I recall correctly, they didn't start bundling it with Office via force installations with no uninstall until mid 2019?
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  zoom was successful before the pandemic. They grew, as did a lot of online services, but they were already established as a major player in that field by that time.
  - swalling 3y ago
    Zoom was a successful enterprise business pre-pandemic, but it was unequivocally the lockdowns that accelerated their growth and valuation. In one year they went from 10 million monthly meeting participants to over 350 million (https://www.vox.com/recode/21726260/zoom-microsoft-teams-video-conferencing-post-pandemic-coronavirus https://www.vox.com/recode/21726260/zoom-microsoft-teams-vid...).
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      which is what I said, the issue is claiming they wouldn't be a successful company without the pandemic.
      - swalling 3y ago
        They would not have had a market cap of more than $100 billion dollars without it
        3y ago
bamboozled 3y ago
“Peter Thiel, thought leader”
ludwik 3y ago
You may find this statement obvious and as such uninteresting but it does have a clear, simple meaning. And while it is simple, I see people who think that they can "build the next X" by replicating X's features all the time. ["X" is used as a placeholder and not to refer to the ridiculously named social network]

> "Every moment in business happens only once." -- Peter Thiel Sounds smart, but doesn't mean anything.

by shafyy 3y ago

> "Every moment in business happens only once." -- Peter Thiel Sounds smart, but doesn't mean anything.

It sounds like what it's intending to get across is that there are market conditions that lead to a product taking off, and market conditions by nature change, which means a product taking off today doesn't necessarily mean that the same product would take off tomorrow. So I'm curious about your opinion. How does it mean nothing to you?

nostrademons 3y ago

It's actually pretty profound for a certain audience, and that audience overlaps pretty heavily with HN. A lot of people expect to gain lessons about what'll work in the future by studying the past. They'll point to successful product X, and then build product Y that tries to replicate all the good parts of product X, and not realize that there are a lot of subtle interactions between a product and the social & environmental conditions of its audience that lead to it taking off. If you build the same product but the environment is different, you get different results. Similarly, it's a lesson to pay very careful attention to what's going on in the environment today, and index more on that than what has worked with the environment of the past. That's why good VC presentations always have a slide for "What has changed? Why is this a good idea now when it wasn't in the past?"

swalling 3y ago

A less grandiose version of this aphorism: timing the market matters just as much as what product you ship. People tend to focus on product attributes and pricing because compared to timing, it is more in your control. An example of this that I think about a lot is Zoom. Zoom nailed video/audio quality more than most of other competing products, but otherwise they didn't offer anything that new compared to legions of other enterprise A/V platforms. They just happened to offer unlimited free meetings for <= 100 participants right as the pandemic happened. This was all pretty much lucky timing and some good choices around freemium growth mechanics. This window of opportunity closed quickly for competing products as behavior changed and network effects took hold. The only new competitor that emerged mid-pandemic was Teams, because MSFT could literally force install it on every Windows machine.

IcyWindows 3y ago
Do you mean the consumer version? The enterprise version has been around and available for subscription with the other office products before the pandemic.
- swalling 3y ago
  If I recall correctly, they didn't start bundling it with Office via force installations with no uninstall until mid 2019?
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
zoom was successful before the pandemic. They grew, as did a lot of online services, but they were already established as a major player in that field by that time.
- swalling 3y ago
  Zoom was a successful enterprise business pre-pandemic, but it was unequivocally the lockdowns that accelerated their growth and valuation. In one year they went from 10 million monthly meeting participants to over 350 million (https://www.vox.com/recode/21726260/zoom-microsoft-teams-video-conferencing-post-pandemic-coronavirus https://www.vox.com/recode/21726260/zoom-microsoft-teams-vid...).
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    which is what I said, the issue is claiming they wouldn't be a successful company without the pandemic.
    - swalling 3y ago
      They would not have had a market cap of more than $100 billion dollars without it
      - 3y ago

bamboozled 3y ago

“Peter Thiel, thought leader”

ludwik 3y ago

You may find this statement obvious and as such uninteresting but it does have a clear, simple meaning. And while it is simple, I see people who think that they can "build the next X" by replicating X's features all the time. ["X" is used as a placeholder and not to refer to the ridiculously named social network]