{"id":3813,"date":"2011-03-05T07:05:20","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T15:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redfindevelop.wpengine.com\/blog\/?p=3813"},"modified":"2020-10-05T13:12:32","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T20:12:32","slug":"when_bad_companies_do_good_things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/when_bad_companies_do_good_things\/","title":{"rendered":"When Bad Companies Do Good Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entrepreneurs often ask me where good ideas come from. My answer usually is from bad companies.
\nThe most obvious example of this is Facebook. MySpace prospered despite its founders’ penchant for pornography, spam and spyware<\/a>. San Franciscans loved Friendster despite the reputed self-destructiveness of its founder<\/a>, Jonathan Abrams. Was it really so hard to imagine that a Harvard computer scientist could build a better social network?
\nCitysearch was left for dead by IAC, but it was still folks’ only option for local online guides when Urbanspoon and Yelp came along.\u00a0When Yahoo couldn’t do anything right<\/a>, Yahoo Answers was a hit, which wasn’t lost on the founders of Quora.\u00a0The same is true of newspapers and The Huffington Post, of Flickr and Instagram, of IAC’s Expedia and Kayak, of Match.com and OkCupid.
\nIn all of these cases, the problem of social networking or photo-sharing seemed to have been addressed by a company that had lost its mojo.\u00a0The reason that no one tried to build a social network after 2000 was because we all saw what happened to Friendster.\u00a0The reason no one tried to build a technology-powered real estate brokerage is because we watched eRealty go down in flames.
\nThese companies become the dead bodies in a passageway that new entrepreneurs have to step over before conquering the usual dragons a startup faces, of getting customers and making money. “Isn’t Yahoo doing that?” potential partners or investors ask. “Didn’t eRealty try that?” The answer to that question is “Yeah, but we’ll do it much better, cheaper, faster.” It can sound like empty swagger, and sometimes it is. But that’s\u00a0how almost every startup succeeds.
\nWhat the entrepreneur has to focus on is whether people want a Q&A site, a local guide, a technology-powered real estate broker. Wherever there’s demand, especially demand so strong that consumers work with a company they don’t even like, you can find a way to win.
\nA professor of my brother’s once complained that freshmen who sprinted through\u00a0One Hundred Years of Solitude <\/em>as part of a 12-week survey course\u00a0would go through life thinking they had read the book, never coming back to the experience when they could truly appreciate it.
\nThe same is true of startups. The market concludes about an idea that we’ve been there and done that, but often it’s the second or third time that’s a charm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Entrepreneurs often ask me where good ideas come from. My answer usually is from bad companies. The most obvious example of this is Facebook. MySpace prospered despite its founders’ penchant for pornography, spam and spyware. San Franciscans loved Friendster despite the reputed self-destructiveness of its founder, Jonathan Abrams. Was it really so hard to imagine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"dashboard":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-company-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhen Bad Companies Do Good Things - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/when_bad_companies_do_good_things\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When Bad Companies Do Good Things\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Entrepreneurs often ask me where good ideas come from. 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