4 ms·
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 pric
by 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 agoDo 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 agoIf I recall correctly, they didn't start bundling it with Office via force installations with no uninstall until mid 2019?
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agozoom 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 agoZoom 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 agowhich is what I said, the issue is claiming they wouldn't be a successful company without the pandemic.
- swalling 3y agoThey would not have had a market cap of more than $100 billion dollars without it
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y agoyeah, and MS wasn't successful before Azure, when their market cap ballooned. Stop rationalizing bologna. They grew during the pandemic, as did a lot of online services. They were a perfectly viable company before said pandemic.