Kfupm 101

“As we’ve discussed, key growth factors like distribution and network effects tend to provide disproportionate rewards to a company that is the first in its space to achieve critical scale.”
― Reid Hoffman, Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

“of all, this “solve your own problem” approach lets you fall in love with what you’re making. You know the problem and the value of its solution intimately. There’s no substitute for that. After all, you’ll (hopefully) be working on this for years to come. Maybe even the rest of your life. It better be something you really care about.”
― Jason Fried, ReWork

“solutions to market saturation might sound straightforward—add new geographies, support more formats and business models, and other tips that sound like common sense. However, the challenge is in the execution, which can’t be underestimated. Launching in every major country around the world while simultaneously staying on top of a hypergrowth startup in a core market is not easy. Yet that’s exactly what eBay had to do, building one of the most valuable internet companies in the 1990s while simultaneously adding the international business, “Buy It Now,” and new product verticals. Once these obvious growth levers are mined, what’s next? Eventually new products have to be layered on. It’s hard to ask teams to start and build new products from scratch. It’s difficult enough as a startup, but trying to do this inside a larger company adds myriad of complexities—there’s internal politics, distractions, lack of resources, adverse selection of talent, and dozens of other challenges.”
― Andrew Chen, The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects — A Venture Capitalist on Building Startups

“we suspect that the market for food delivery from existing restaurants—a pure commodity business—is unlikely to offer any lasting competitive advantages that would justify an expensive blitzscaling campaign.”
― Reid Hoffman, Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies