Start-up cliche #37 (of ∞) – “This app we’re working on is going to be the next [Facebook|Google|Amazon|Salesforce]!”
The next Facebook is already being written. In an office somewhere, a team of developers are hacking together a new take on a social platform that’s going to replace the Facebook we all know and use today. That’s a certainty. It is happening.
However, it’s very likely indeed that the office happens to be in Menlo Park in California, and the sign on the door says Facebook, Inc. A start-up no one has heard of yet isn’t going to replace Facebook.
Facebook isn’t necessarily better at making social software than everyone else could be. They’re not the keepers of some secret knowledge passed from father to son in the Zuckerberg family for generations. They don’t have the best ideas most of the time. But they don’t really need them. Having the best ideas isn’t what makes a business successful. Success comes from either being very lucky and getting it right the first time, or more often from learning from the mistakes you and other businesses make.
Facebook are fortunate to have the resources to try things other businesses can’t and to copy the things that other businesses succeed with. They have enough developers to quickly implement things that people like. They have enough users to experiment with new features even if they might be bad. A change that drives away 10 million users sucks for any business, but Facebook can afford the cost of getting it wrong. Working in the start-up environment, especially in the UK but it’s true elsewhere, you don’t get to make mistakes like that. Either you get it right first time and hit on the winning formula from the outset or you run out of money and close the doors. That’s how it works. Start-ups don’t get to learn from the things that don’t work. They fold at the first failure because they don’t have the financial resources to carry on.
This is why taking Facebook’s crown is never going to happen for a start-up. Of course, the reality is that any competent start-up founder doesn’t actually believe they’re building the next Facebook in the first place. It’s hyperbole. It’s shorthand for “this product is hugely scaleable”. Unfortunately though, when someone says something like that, it’s hard to avoid thinking that they might actually believe they’re building the next Facebook.