The myth of the overnight success

http://cdixon.org/2012/03/16/the-myth-of-the-overnight-success/

by parth16 • 14 years ago

168 36 14 years ago

thesash• 14 years ago

Add OMGPOP and the recent "overnight" success of Draw Something to the list. All the articles touting it as the fastest growing game of all time ever painted the story as an overnight success, and failed to mention the backstory of the company. Not only has OMGPOP been around for 5 years, and raised 17M in VC funding, but the game itself has been around almost since the beginning as a web version, but only exploded in usage when it launched for iPhone.

alaskamiller• 14 years ago

Two myths at play:

1. Overnight is never overnight. More probably you just never heard of it before.

2. If you just keep going you will eventually make it. But probably not. (http://swombat.com/2012/3/10/successful-people)

Believe what you want and act accordingly.

sskates3• 14 years ago

It's not "just keep going and you will eventually make it". It's a question of continuing to learn and make progress towards your goal over a long period of time (in this case, how to build a successful startup). Malcolm Gladwell calls it "deliberate practice".

For whatever reason most people can't do it, and that's okay, startups are not for everyone. But if you want to be a Pinterest type success, then that's what it will take.

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Malcolm Gladwell calls it "deliberate practice".

Malcolm Gladwell, who has said in an interview that he writes to try out ideas

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html

"Q: Do you worry that you extrapolate too much from too little? "A: No. It's better to err on the side of over-extrapolation. These books are playful in the sense that they regard ideas as things to experiment with. I'm happy if somebody reads my books and reaches a conclusion that is different from mine, as long as the ideas in the book cause them to think. You have to be willing to put pressure on theories, to push the envelope. That's the fun part, the exciting part. If you are writing an intellectual adventure story, why play it safe? I'm not out to convert people. I want to inspire and provoke them."

is good, while trying out ideas, at crediting his sources. He correctly sources the term "deliberate practice" to its coiner, psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, a world-leading expert on the subject of the acquisition of expertise.

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html

sskates3• 14 years ago

People also regularly underestimate the amount of determination you need. It's not only that Pinterest itself was 2 years in the making, but the founders had created failed startups before that too.

Ben Silbermann started with MightyQuiz in January 2007 (YC backed as well) [1]. He's been at it for 5 years now. That's how long it takes to figure out how to build a successful company.

[1] http://www.linkedin.com/in/silbermann

barry-cotter• 14 years ago

The psychological literature on expertise and mastery is nothing to do with "igon value"[0] Gladwell. If any one person were to be associated with deliberate practice it should be K. Anders Ericsson[1].

Gladwell is an excellent storyteller; that is the extent of his talents.

And a goal as vague as "a successful startup" is extremely unlikely to get you anywhere. You need a great deal more specificity and short time periods so you can tell if you're going right or wrong.

[0]http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html...

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1897

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Anders_Ericsson

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html

einhverfr• 14 years ago

I think the way to look at overnight success is that one can suddenly break through, but it's all about the painful preparation, and efforts that go into it usually for years beforehand.

Failure is a stage on the road to success, or else you do not survive it.

tyree732• 14 years ago

To be a pedant, I can't imagine the coiner of this phrase or really anyone who has ever thought about it uses the term in the sense that something or someone became successful because of actions taken over a proverbial overnight. The examples he mentioned are things which became popular abruptly, which seems to embody the spirit of the phrase just right.

To take the point to the extreme, absolutely nothing could be considered an overnight success if we use the term in the sense the author implies because noone is wildly successful at something they attempt for the first time if they have no apriori knowledge of how to do it from previous attempts or study.

stevenj• 14 years ago

Anyone know of any examples of overnight success or close to it?

Edit: Maybe Hot or Not?

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

Something like iFart perhaps? I guess facebook was also a very quick success.

sskates3• 14 years ago

Zuckerberg was already a great programmer before Facebook, and had a number of successful projects under his belt. Facebook also took years to build, its growth was not anything like what Pinterest has been experiencing.

drumdance• 14 years ago

Cheezburger took off in the first couple months.

joering24• 14 years ago

To me "the biggest overnight success award" goes to Andrey Ternovskiy for Chatroulette. The site climbed high in rankings fast, quickly started generating profits, hundreds of clones came to life (of none of course got any traction although everyone was making it better), you could buy the "roulette script" online and do your own site, and Andrey score a visa to US to work on some other startups, as far as I know. This, in any possible measures, especially with someone of 17 years old, I personally call "overnight success".

There was also a guy selling pixels, which was stunning to me how his out of box thinking got him a million bucks (he is working on a cool idea raising charity money for Africa now). Of course plenty other similar website popup, but none got traction.

fosk• 14 years ago

The guy that sells pixels made 1M+ with http://milliondollarhomepage.com/

Basically he sells 1M "pixels" for $1 each to show advertisings. The pixels you buy have an expiration date so he probably sold more than 1M px. I read somewhere that it works pretty well and brings lots of users to advertisers, probably because of the press and the momentum generated around the service.

michaelkscott• 14 years ago

This isn't a start up or anything like that, but since you asked for overnight success, I think the Kony 2012 stuff is a good example of that.

guynamedloren• 14 years ago

Are you kidding me? Did you even watch the video? Correct me if I'm wrong, but they've been trying to get him forever, and they still don't have him, so I wouldnt call that a success. Eyeballs != success. Accomplishing a higher goal (ie catching kony, making huge profit, getting acquired) == success.

Also, invisible children has been hustling for years without a huge 'hit'.

shingen• 14 years ago

If we're talking zero to crazy scale: Formspring.

They went from zero to 70 million daily pageviews in 90 days.

The domain Formspring.me was registered Nov 12, 2009. They hit 69 million pageviews on February 11, 2010. They did 1.8 billion pageviews that February.

_delirium• 14 years ago

"Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" (quickly renamed Yahoo) was the first commercial project of its grad-student co-founders, and was pretty big within the first year (big enough for Ziff-Davis to launch a companion Yahoo print magazine). IPO'd about two years after launch. Mostly good timing imo; they caught the internet wave with a decently organized web directory.

InfinityX0• 14 years ago

To me the closest example of an "overnight success" is where someone bursts on the scene as a celebrity because of their discovered personality. For example, people on reality shows become "niche" successful because they are discovered, rarely because they toiled away at that skill. However, their "success" still comes from years upon years of refined, unique experience to create the look+personality that created a star. If they had been discovered in the prepubescent period, it is almost a certainty nobody would have cared.

It's the same idea, just with different variables.

rjurney• 14 years ago

Since moving to silicon valley I've had the good fortune to know a group of highly motivated, talented entrepreneurs. They are some of the leaders in their industry, the spearhead of an important movement.

When I first met them, none of them had achieved wild success. I watched them struggle through failed startups, crap jobs, endless fundraising and calamity.

Now several game changing startups have emerged from this group. I am proud to know them. Not one of them was an overnight success. Just determined hard work, learning, and picking themselves up off the floor.

staunch2• 14 years ago

One of my favorite examples is YouTube. They actually were about as close to "overnight success" as it gets. It was still something like a year and a half before they had significant traffic and most of us heard of them.

tomhoward• 14 years ago

Also worth noting that they had a huge headstart over most people, as early-stage employees at PayPal.

chubot• 14 years ago

That's not accurate -- they launched the domain in Feb 2005; they uploaded the first video April 2005; they officially launched in November 2005; then Lazy Sunday went viral in December 2005.

They were already well known before Lazy Sunday, but that tipped them over the edge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

YouTube the company was an overnight success, if anything can be called that. I wouldn't say the founders had overnight success, but pretty close to it. They put in some time at PayPal and probably made out quite well from its sale, which allowed them to start YouTube. Some people just have talent + luck.

staunch2• 14 years ago

Depends how you define well know I guess. I think mid 2006 was when the world at large heard of them.

rokhayakebe• 14 years ago

But be careful. If you are getting series of tiny successes, or even if you have great engagement from 100 users, it is good sign. However, if your site is a ghost town after 1 year, you may want to rethink it.

dm8• 14 years ago

Agree with Chris. Also, how do you define overnight success? Huge traction in first few months? Significant revenues in first year? Or something else? If its building wildly profitable company then I don't think anyone (at least Internet companies) can claim they had overnight success.

Edit: Missed word "wildly"

petermcd• 14 years ago

Great that Rovio makes the fact that Angry Birds was their 52nd game part of their mythology.

Every time I read a glossy write-up, I find myself wishing they'd dig a bit deeper into the trial-and-error and near failure that went on before companies became successful.

It takes grit, y'all!

mmaunder• 14 years ago

Patterns I've noticed (wrt monetary success):

It usually takes decades which is why old guys are richer.

You can do it as an exec-employee or founder.

Contentment, comfort, routine, closed mindedness, dogma, not questioning the status quo every day, following established patterns of entrepreneurship because "that's how it's done", these are all your enemies.

Greedy and selfish people seem to do better in business. [Yeah, it's not a feel-good statement, but go out there and count the beans.]

Iterating in cycles less than 2 years with a new company every time is a sure fire recipe for not succeeding outside the Valley. Inside the Valley, you'll probably eventually get your talent acquisition money from Google. You simply don't have time to learn the market, your customers and to surround the business with people who trust it.

It takes time for you to empathize with your customer. In other words, to understand why the hell they'd give you money for your product or service.

As a founder, not fighting tooth and nail to keep as much control of your business as you possibly can is usually a leading indicator of failure. Not saying you must keep control, but there's a level of passivity I've noticed in this that usually indicates an entrepreneur who doesn't have their heart in their business.

Of course overnight success is bull. But the lottery ticket perception outsiders have of tech entrepreneurship is actually good for attracting investors and new blood, some of whom actually become real entrepreneurs. So the myth of overnight success does have it's uses.

funkah• 14 years ago

If only it was as simple as hard work and persistence. Taleb does a great job of covering this in "The Black Swan". You may strike it big. But you may spend your whole life in the antechamber of hope.

justin• 14 years ago

Maybe so, but the answer isn't to worry about toiling away ad infinitum in failure. Better to be a modern day Calvinist and act as if your actions will make a difference even if you aren't preordained to reach Heaven.

mycodebreaks• 14 years ago

Dropbox was also not the first company that Drew started.

The myth of the overnight success

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