You can't really blame them for taking the path they chose. Check-ins were what the market wanted at that time. Gowalla was guaranteed to be building for a market that existed. Yes, they could have said, "Screw check-ins, let's focus on photos", but that would have been a much bigger risk than going to war with an equally early staged startup.
Imagine if they would have drastically pivoted away from check-ins and failed. I'm sure Gowalla would be contemplating what could have been if they stayed true to check-ins and went to war with Foursquare.
I think it's too easy to say in retrospect that they should have "played by their own rules." Even though they were playing by the check-in rules, at least they were playing in a real game.
Actually, you can, which was the point of his essay: focus on validating your vision, rather than being reactive to someone else's actions.
They were too focused on being reactive to a competitor, rather than really understanding their users. Because if you just copy whatever your competitor is doing, you're getting the understanding of your users second-hand, and you might end up copying things that aren't important--you might end up cargo culting.
He's not saying, "Oh, if we had only just done photo sharing, we would have knocked it out of the park!" He's saying that while checkins was a way to validate that users want to play a game that lets them see the world through their friends' eyes, they should have been open to other solutions to validate against that original thesis (like photo sharing), instead of being caught up in being competitive overriding the validation and learning about their users.
The harder part is really looking at your users, how they use the product, what they want - but not what they say they want. With my product, we have people requesting features of the 'big dog' - only because that's what they've seen. We're not about to blindly implement what a competitor does just because they did it - it's assuming they did the research into that feature, and we don't have to.
Anyway, essentially - it's really hard to not copy a competitor when that's all your users are vocally asking for is to do just that.
Burbn pivoted and they knew what they were going after - it was not by accident - that they built an app that was gorgeous to use and make part of your life - they were focused.
I sort of interpreted this to mean that though neither of them had evidence about whether check-ins translated to revenue over time, Foursquare chose to project it as though it did, thereby creating the "game" that Gowalla joined.
I'm not saying Gowalla originally copied Foursquare, but this blog post got me wondering -
What are some notable examples of a "copycat" startup actually overtaking the original "innovator" startup? Because I'm having trouble thinking of any off the top of my head. (And I'm not talking about cases like Facebook overtaking MySpace or Google overtaking Yahoo where a fundamentally different company overtook a long-dominant incumbent)
Foursquare beat out Gowalla, Google+ never had a chance against Facebook, Groupon beat out Living Social, Pinterest beat out all its copycats, Square has managed to stay ahead of the competition, same with Dropbox, Evernote, Y Combinator, Airbnb, LinkedIn, etc. I could go on but you get my point.
Great find. Silly me, should've checked Quora first.
Indeed, the first examples that came to mind were the iPod, as well as Android which has arguably "overtaken" iOS at this point.
To be fair though, for my original question I wanted to try limiting the scope to only startups, and more specifically startups that have almost the same product.
If you look from an international perspective, there are companies started in Europe that did much better in the european markets than the "original" product. The end result is pretty much that the "original" had to buy out the clone.
Yes, but this is partly due to the (arguably) slow expansion of hot US startups into overseas markets. The Samwer brothers basically took an approach of copying successful US startups, so in some sense they can bootstrap some of the learning from the predecessor, while never having to directly compete (until the original decides to expand).
The ones that died early while being overtaken probably didn't leave much in the way of remains.
I doubt that Gowalla and Foursquare were the only 'check-in' apps at the time but we don't hear about the ones they surpassed. In other words, I'm suggesting that what you're describing happens all the time.
Square has managed to stay ahead of the competition
In the US.
Lots of copycat companies are competing to do what Square does outside the US. It will be interesting to see if Square manages to compete in those markets if and when they feel ready, or if they'll be forced to chose between buying out the local incumbent or leaving the market.
Spreadsheets and word processors are good examples. Visicalc was overtaken by Lotus 1-2-3 which was overtaken by Excel. WordPerfect was overtaken by Microsoft Word.
Love the honesty. Not always great to chase competitors in a market that isn't even clearly a winner. Foursquare won the check-in race but now after all that time they're trying to rebrand away from the check-in, since the check-in business is still kind of niche. But hopefully the data turns into something meaningful.
I think branding did have some impact on Foursquare becoming more popular than Gowalla, too.
At least the name "Foursquare" consists of real English words that mean something on their own. This isn't true for "Gowalla". It looks and sounds like gibberish.
A few years back, when this area was picking up, a co-worker of mine was talking to us over lunch about these different services. He could remember the name Foursquare right away, but not Gowalla. While trying to remember Gowalla's name, he said that it sounded like "Gorilla", but it was something different. It was only about a week or so later that I figured out he was talking about Gowalla, after seeing it mentioned somewhere else.
I wouldn't be surprised if other people couldn't remember Gowalla's name, as well.
This is some hard-won wisdom. You always know in your head that you're suppose to focus on users and not on competitors, but sometimes, until you make the mistake yourself, you don't know what it actually feels like in the thick of things.
The spectators in the arena, like your users and the media, like a drama. They'll invent one if they have to, in order tell a story to each other or to bring some excitement for people to care. But in reality, don't get caught up in the hype, and focus on the two things that matter: understanding users using your product, and understanding how to get more users.
Brilliant article. Something to keep in mind. I shuttered a start-up I was working on (VenueMenu) after participating in an accelerator here in Brisbane, Australia (called ilab, I highly recommend it!) for this one simple reason:
We were going into a market that was already defined, with a difference. This difference wasn't enough, and we were always going to be playing the rules of the 800lb gorillas already in place. It was a niche market, that was already over-served.
The nail in the coffin was that here in Australia, the competitors had seen exists at less that AUD$10m. Because of that, no VC's would touch us, so we couldn't get the runway we needed to launch and try to bust the market wide open.
I'm glad we decided to sink the ship before we left the port. I learnt a lot, and saved a lot of time and money.
I thought Gowalla was a beautiful app for the Palm Pre at the time. I was switching between that and Foursquare. In the end Foursquare won me over because of their dataset. I didn't have to constantly create new places to check in.
I think if they'd pivoted into something different where they focused on "seeing through your friends eyes" like the OP mentioned I think they would have been better off even if they'd failed. I did enjoy using the app but I could tell pretty quickly that playing the check-in game race was a losing one for them.
Well, both "lost". Foursquare doesn't really turn a profit, or if it does, I think it's insignificant? Now that I think of it, the relevant lesson from this is that investors are fallible.
Seldom do we get to hear from folks who almost made it big in such an instructive and open manner. Thank you.
Besides being a way to "see the world through the eyes of your friends", Instagram is a one-stop shop for taking pictures, photoshopping, and sharing to Facebook all in the same app.
I think the "genius", if you will, of Instagram is that it simplied things for users by combining two apps in one, without unnecessary features.
Great article. I think Gowalla would have had a better chance if they aggressively pursued the things foursquare wasn't doing, like conquering Europe for instance. I always had the feeling none of the two companies was trying hard enough in Europe.
> Today I'm at Facebook. It's a special time to be at the company right now. We're able to build unique products that few others can dream of.
Sorry but you are nothing more than an office drone in a cooperation writing about achievements far in the past. Calling this post "Playing by your own rules" must be pure irony -- how can an ordinary product manager at Facebook play by his own rules? You are employed man, you play by others' rules and your post is a day dream, just a weak try to get some attention as a boring product manager and covering your endless desperation. Start something new and forget the past.
And you're someone that uses a throw away account to call out someone. Nice.
[EDIT] The downvotes are for not adding value to the discussion here. Your initial post was only a one-line hateful comment. Nice try updating it with an unmarked edit.
Excuse my harsh words, but HN is for tech founders, for real entrepreneurs. This is just the wrong place for someone who was once a founder but is now employed for years (and writing such confusing posts).
EDIT: I am not sure who is spreading the hate here. Instead of distracting with mentioning "unmarked edits" just try to comment on the content of my post (which is about non-founders sitting in the safe haven and teaching us how startups work).
EDIT2: your account is also kind of a throw away account (karma: 3 and just one submission in one year)
So, anyone who has a job shouldn't be on HN? Dude, I think think the vast majority of the HN community is employed by someone else. You can be into hacking and technology without being an entrepreneur.
> I think think the vast majority of the HN community is employed by someone else.
I don't think so. HN is YC is full of real entrepreneurs and risk takers. Most on HN are tech founders or at least employed but with having side projects and ambitions to get real founders. The OP is working at Facebook, proud of being an employee and having no side projects (otherwise he wouldn't blog about Gowalla years later).
I'm not. I'm here because I find the scene fascinating and thoroughly enjoy the breadth of intelligent discussion on topics ranging from design to programming to personal productivity to social effects on tech to etc.
I think it's incredibly unwise to play the elitism card and try to drive people like myself away from HN. You risk suffocating the community and producing an echo chamber of certain discussion points, eventually reducing to stale repetition. It runs absolutely counter to the mandate of 'anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiousity'.
I've seen experts in niche topics wade in and provide fantastic insight and wisdom on information I'd never have thought to find here as it has nothing to do with startups and hacking. I've tried to contribute myself (e.g.: there was a discussion on spider's silk stopping a train and someone asked about the structure of the train, the designing of which is my day job) and hope that through doing so I can encourage others to return the favour.
The OP has experiences and insights directly related to the central pillar of HN. His sharing them through blog posts or HN comments can be to the benefit of the community. Rejecting them to fulfill some stupid sense of elitism for the 'true entrepreneurs' is daft.
You can be employed and still be entrepreneur, definitions from Wikipedia:
"1934: Schumpeter: Entrepreneurs are innovators who use a process of shattering the status quo of the existing products and services, to set up new products, new services."
"1983: G. Pinchot: Intrapreneur is an entrepreneur within an already established organization."
Imagine if they would have drastically pivoted away from check-ins and failed. I'm sure Gowalla would be contemplating what could have been if they stayed true to check-ins and went to war with Foursquare.
I think it's too easy to say in retrospect that they should have "played by their own rules." Even though they were playing by the check-in rules, at least they were playing in a real game.