16 Responses to “Every Major web company started…”

• Robert Franklin
  June 5th, 2007
  12:23 pm
  
  

  Very interesting, I wonder where the impetus for this thread was born?

  I have to agree especially when you have limited funds. If your idea has real legs it will grow based on being successful locally and will make it easier for you to raise additional funds if needed.

  Get on base and grow.

  P.S. Still a loyal reader

• Noah Everett
  June 5th, 2007
  12:34 pm
  
  

  The majority of artists on http://www.indiefy.com are local. Would I like to have national exposure?…yes, but you can’t beat face-to-face communication with bands in the area. 80% of the artists signed up because of a local referral by a friend.

• Will Kern
  June 5th, 2007
  1:10 pm
  
  

  Don’t forget AOL was all over Dulles, Virginia (I know, where the hell is that right?)

  Will

• Jason H.
  June 5th, 2007
  1:32 pm
  
  

  Yahoo was Stanford

  Craigslist, eBay and Yelp were SF

  Napster was Northeastern U.

  Digg, Friendster, and Meebo had the tech geeks from the Valley all over it.

  Skype had the oversee asians all over it.

  I think all of them have two things in common–Geeks and Hipsters/Trend Setters

  Any idea how YouTube got started?

• Kip
  June 5th, 2007
  2:09 pm
  
  

  I think where is got started is not same thing as the target market. “Start nationally” sounds like you are talking about lauching nationwide.

  The real point is don’t go nationwide (ads? Marketing..ect) if your best friends and family can not even use the services. Success full companies are started to fill a local need i.e without greed of taking over the world.

• Jason H.
  June 5th, 2007
  2:38 pm
  
  

  Here is good question we shoudl all be asking:

  “What did all these successful web companies do right to cross the chasm?”

• Rik
  June 5th, 2007
  3:28 pm
  
  

  If you think of it, it’s not weird that things happen like that: most of these companies got their momentum from word-of-mouth, which is a local phenomenon. Although it has a scaling advantage, in the beginning web works the same as brick&mortar companies like starbucks did; you need to build a critical mass, which is easiest done locally.

• Charles
  June 5th, 2007
  3:46 pm
  
  

  I can relate to this. I started a small social networking site and tried to go national from day one. It wasn’t until I realized that half of my users were Stanford grads from the Bay Area that I stopped focusing on national reach and focused instead on going deeper in the region where my users already seemed to be.

  I think the reason is simple — it’s a lot easier to get word of mouth to happen in a geographically dense area. It’s also easier to understand how those in your home geo behave.

• Noah Kagan
  June 5th, 2007
  5:11 pm
  
  

  How’s your site doing Charles?

  Rik,

  Good point on Starbucks with their Seattle roots. I doubt they would have done as well starting in Wyoming.

• Noah Kagan
  June 5th, 2007
  5:13 pm
  
  

  Jason,

  Great way to think about it. I am not sure off the top of my head. I think fundamentally you create an amazing product. On the other hand with MySpace maybe you create the shittiest product you can think of:)

• Patrick
  June 5th, 2007
  8:49 pm
  
  

  I guess it is really hard to start a LOCAL tech company outside of SF.

• Jason H.
  June 5th, 2007
  11:35 pm
  
  

  Noah,

  It’s funny you said that MySpace created the shittiest product. When u really think about it, it’s probably the only one of the more successful web2.0 companies that were spread by the non-geeks and non-ivy-leaguers! I wonder if there is a correlation???

• Damon Billian
  June 6th, 2007
  2:15 am
  
  

  I know that some of the PayPal folks think the next huge company will come from the Palo Alto/Mountain View area (they used statistics, of course).

  Pretty much all of the companies mentioned in the post started in tech-friendly areas, even if all of them weren’t started in California.

• Deron
  June 6th, 2007
  5:57 am
  
  

  Interesting! Gives hope to the rest of us who don’t have thousands to pump into a new start up. Thanks for sharing.

• Noah Kagan
  June 6th, 2007
  10:05 am
  
  

  I also realized Plaxo started at Sand Hill Road and LinkedIn started with the tech valley.

• Piaras M
  June 21st, 2007
  9:02 am
  
  

  One of the first and greatest communitry based sites that I became involved with was Chowhounds. This was and is a great site due to its independant content and the voyeristic aspect of being able to see where other animals come to graze. I love to see what other people are eating and the sense of community is really cool too.

  Hey Noah, here is an oldschool entry for a SF Bay area Burrito Tour. I know you love your Burrito’s.

  http://www.chowhound.com/topics/17286?query=burritos

  Back to the topic at hand. I think that one of the reasons that this site works is that even though it is a national site, it can be broken down regionally to pinpoint relevant information specific to your own demographic. This gives it a more grass roots and community based feel.

  I may be off here but , for me, this site sticks in my concience and I often recommend it to others.

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