Three PayPal alums above a pizzeria.
YouTube
Started as dating. Pivoted to elephants.
$1.65B in 20 months
Visit YouTube ↗Go meet the legends.
Read how each one started, then go try the real thing.
Two UVA roommates pitch food ordering by phone.
Their first idea got rejected. Their first users were fake.
Front page of the internet
Visit Reddit ↗
2005. Apple adds podcasts to iTunes.
A podcast startup pivoted to telling people what you had for lunch.
Now X, for reasons
Visit Twitter ↗
Their first app, Burbn, did too much.
A failed check-in app. A filter on a Mexican beach.
13 people. $1B.
Visit Instagram ↗
First game failed. Pivot became Flickr.
Slack
Failed at a game. Twice. Shipped the office chat instead.
Salesforce paid $27.7B
Visit Slack ↗
2013. A hosting startup, going nowhere.
Docker
A five-minute lightning talk ended 'works on my machine'.
Shipped your laptop
Visit Docker ↗
2014. A mobile game studio.
Discord
Made a game nobody played. Everyone wanted its voice chat.
Group chat for everyone
Visit Discord ↗
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 ↗
YC, 2020. Idea number five dies.
PostHog
Pivoted again and again. Now: hedgehogs.
Hedgehog-led growth
Visit PostHog ↗
2022. First idea: AI for mechanical CAD.
Cursor
Four MIT kids forked an editor. Then coding got weird.
$100M in about a year
Visit Cursor ↗