Can some market creation opportunities be simply too big for a single business or organization to own? Is there such a thing as Too Big to Nail? Twitter and Craigslist are potential modern examples. My former employer, Xerox (in the form of the early technologies created at PARC) is a possible historical example. In a live tweetstorm earlier this week, I improvised a rough argument that are indeed too-big-to-nail opportunities, and suggested the term 'supernova companies' for startups that discover such markets. Several people asked for a more thorough, longform version of the argument, but this would require a very careful and time-consuming analysis of historical data (which I don't have). But, here's a cleaned up and 2x expanded version of the original tweetstorm, with some quick thoughts on how to play in supernova markets.
Too Big to Nail
Can some market creation opportunities be simply too big for a single business or organization to own? Is there such a thing as Too Big to Nail? Twitter and Craigslist are potential modern examples. My former employer, Xerox (in the form of the early technologies created at PARC) is a possible historical example. In a live tweetstorm earlier this week, I improvised a rough argument that are indeed too-big-to-nail opportunities, and suggested the term 'supernova companies' for startups that discover such markets. Several people asked for a more thorough, longform version of the argument, but this would require a very careful and time-consuming analysis of historical data (which I don't have). But, here's a cleaned up and 2x expanded version of the original tweetstorm, with some quick thoughts on how to play in supernova markets.
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