Andrew Laffoon’s Thoughts

Ask any young (late teens - early twenties) user of MySpace why Friendster failed, and it is simple: the site was too slow and did not work right. It was obvious to me - I could hardly stand to use it, because it was aggravatingly slow. I have long forgotten my username and password, and I have no reason to go back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmoney/15friend.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

This is a great article in the NYT about why friendster failed: they focused on all the wrong things. They spent all their time discussing how to become the next Google or Yahoo!, while they could not even keep their web site running. They surrounded themselves with the highest profile figures in the valley, casting a great vision for the future, all the while failing to execute on the most core part of the company: the web site.

This is a great story to read for anyone interested in entrepreneurship and especially for those thinking of starting a web company and raising money to do it. In the end, building a business is all about execution and customer service, not about bringing high profile people and creating buzz. Friendster had the best team, the top board members and more buzz than Google or Yahoo, yet they failed to execute and focus on what customers wanted - a web site that worked!

Congratulations Chad and Steve. You built the biggest and best video sharing site on the web, and the in the process you trumped some of the internet’s biggest players: MySpace, Yahoo! and Google. I hope you can live up to the raised expectations now that you’re part of the Google family.

My Predictions for the post-acquisition GooTube:

0. The valley will become much more attractive for entrepreneurs, VCs and web 2.0 startups. The bubble that we are in continues to grow, and acquisitions become more common as media companies fight for deals.

1. Google and YouTube will sign deals with every major copyright holder, giving them a firm legal footing.

2. YouTube will continue to grow and innovate, especially on the advertising/monetization side and integration with media providers.

3. Google will continue to shift towards becoming a media company. It will use YouTube as a lab to create an effective advertising strategy for video based on making video ads relevant to users.

4. Google will use it’s experience with YouTube to provide relevant advertising for Television.

5. BONUS: MySpace continues to wall itself off from integration with other startups (e.g. YouTube) and begins losing users.

I’d love to hear some feedback on these predictions.

Here are some links to some great coverage of the acquisition:

• TechCrunch was the first to cover it, giving it a “40%” chance of happening. Three days later, the deal was done.
• John Battelle highlights many of the major articles.
• TechCrunch provides notes from the conference call.
• VentureBeat reports that the first meeting, where Larry and Sergey offered $1.6 Billion for YouTube, took place at Denny’s. I love it.

“…plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower