9 ms·
Startups That Started As Blogs
- jmduke 13y agoSurprised to not see Moz on here: while I think they were technically a consultancy at first, their chief export for quite a few years came in the form of incredibly valuable blog posts. My favorite is the 91-point eCommerce conversion checklist: http://moz.com/blog/holygrail-of-ecommerce-conversion-optimization-91-points-checklist http://moz.com/blog/holygrail-of-ecommerce-conversion-optimi...
- dasil003 13y agoI sort of put 37signals in that bucket as well even though they did a lot more consulting, their blog was pretty huge in the very small standards web community of the early Zeldman era.
- randfish 13y agoYeah - we were a blog first, then a consultancy, then moved into software in 2007. Glad you like some of our old posts!
- ibudiallo 13y agoHow about stackoverflow? It was slowly introduced with coding horror.
- elchief 13y agoand joelonsoftware
- Vekz 13y agoWufoo.com not on the list. Was launched out on success of their blog http://www.particletree.com/ http://www.particletree.com/
- tannerc 13y agoAre we counting straight-up professional bloggers too? Kottke, John Gruber, the whole BoingBoing team, etc. Makes you think, doesn't it? Maybe blogging was a little bit bigger than it was made out to be just a few short years ago.
- applecore 13y agoI'm surprised there's no mention of Mint. Their blog played a big role in their pre-launch strategy.
- bdcravens 13y agoSeems like most of the comments on here aren't getting it. The article isn't talking about products that were discussed on a blog; it's referring to blogs that pivoted into a product.
- jere 13y agoHow is "Dalton Caldwell express[ing] his distaste for Twitter's decision to restrict its API" a product?
- joshdotsmith 13y agoAmy Hoy has spoken a lot about this. I think we're about to see a wave of new startups that focus first on info-products that involve blogs at some stage, then later pivoting into a SaaS product. This is exactly what I'm doing right now. Everything works as one big marketing funnel from tweets/pins/posts to free downloadable content and one-off landing pages, to single page apps, to e-books and videos, all the way up to SaaS. I have to come to love the term Amy uses for these: e-bombs. Finding customer pains and dropping e-bombs on them is a really lean way to learn a ton quickly, build an audience, and even make money. If you get really good, you can make it into a repeatable process that works over and over regardless of your domain experience. That said, I still think it might be a little difficult for me to do this for, say, theoretical physicists. I'm personally inclined to partner up with domain experts rather than trying to do it all myself as a lone technologist. Great examples in the post. Now let's see some more! I've seen Moz and 37signals mentioned. Who else are we missing?
- catwell 13y agoDeezer was originally a blog called Blogmusik. It was streaming music illegally and was shut down following a trial by the French equivalent of RIAA, then re-launched as Deezer. EDIT: I realized that Deezer is not well-known in the US. It is a major music startup competing with the likes of Spotify and rdio in the rest of the world.
- RickyShaww 13y agoThe evolution of blogs. I'm quite fascinated by the efforts and sh!t load of works the have put into it.
- rrhoover 13y agoThere are several examples of startups taking a blog-first approach. While I was writing this, I found it surprising no one else was talking about this.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pushkargaikwad 13y agoIdeally we want to say "Businesses that started as blogs". SEOBook is a great example, Aaron started it as a blog in 2005 where he used to put daily seo news, then he slowly converted it into a business and is now offering tools and there is a paid forum. SEOMoz is another such example.