First game failed. Pivot became Flickr.
Slack
Failed at a game. Twice. Shipped the office chat instead.
Salesforce paid $27.7B
Visit Slack ↗Go meet the legends.
Read how each one started, then go try the real thing.
The Long Bull Run
2010–2015 Cheap money, per-seat pricing.
2013. A hosting startup, going nowhere.
Docker
A five-minute lightning talk ended 'works on my machine'.
Shipped your laptop
Visit Docker ↗
Stanford, 2013. A shop owner has too many orders.
DoorDash
Stanford kids, a PDF menu, and their own cellphones.
The last mile, on a Civic
Visit DoorDash ↗
Two founders, chasing computer pioneers' dreams.
Notion
Fired everyone. Moved to Kyoto. Rewrote the whole thing.
Everyone's second brain
Visit Notion ↗
Meet the Wi-Fi-connected juicer.
Juicero
$700 Wi-Fi juicer. Reporters used their hands.
Peak Silicon Valley
A kid in Argentina learns Linux.
Vercel
Argentine kid, self-taught, git push to the world.
git push, done
Visit Vercel ↗
2015. A dinner at the Rosewood.
OpenAI
A nonprofit dinner on Sand Hill. Then a low-key preview.
Fastest-growing app of its day
Visit OpenAI ↗
2014. A mobile game studio.
Discord
Made a game nobody played. Everyone wanted its voice chat.
Group chat for everyone
Visit Discord ↗The Model Years
2016–now The pitch deck writes itself.
2016. An AI chatbot for teenagers.
Hugging Face
Started as a chatbot for teens. Became AI's GitHub.
Open AI, the actual kind
Visit Hugging Face ↗
2020. Hollywood's plan for phones.
Quibi
$1.75B for 10-minute phone shows, launched in a lockdown.
Dead in 6 months
Every issue tracker feels like taxes.
Linear
Opinionated issue tracker. Made ticket-closing feel good.
Engineers actually like it
Visit Linear ↗
YC, 2020. Idea number five dies.
PostHog
Pivoted again and again. Now: hedgehogs.
Hedgehog-led growth
Visit PostHog ↗