Rise after fall: top 5 “losers” in business history

Nikolai Dubinin, host of the Trends YouTube channel, spoke about how well-known developers rebuilt their companies in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy and how Apple, YouTube, Dyson and Instagram started

YouTube: From Failed Dating Site to Biggest Video Hosting Site

YouTube was invented by three friends – Steve Chen, Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley. Chen and Karim worked at PayPal and became rich after the company was sold to eBay. Then they decided to create their own project. Javed Karim came up with the idea of ​​video hosting after an earthquake in the Indian Ocean in 2004 triggered a tsunami. Karim could not find a video about this natural disaster and suggested that his friends start hosting videos on any topic. The idea seemed abstract to Chen and Hurley, but as dating sites gained popularity in the 2000s, they decided that they could launch a platform where those who want to find their soul mate would post videos about what their potential partner should be like. The slogan of the site registered on February 14, 2005 on the youtube.com domain read: “Tune In, Hook Up”, that is, “Turn on and meet.”

Unfortunately for Chen, Karim and Hurley, no profiles appeared on the platform, and YouTube became popular not as a dating site at all. No one used the platform as a dating service, even after the founders posted YouTube on the Craiglist email classifieds site, where they offered single women $20 to post videos of their preferences.

Success came to the platform after a test video. One of the founders, Jawed Karim, checked the technical side of the site and posted a video with elephants from the zoo. Soon, other, already custom, videos began to appear on YouTube. Then Chen, Hurley and Karim completely changed the concept of hosting. By July 2005, YouTube statistics had risen to more than 100 million views per day, and already in September of the same year, a Nike ad with Ronaldinho scored its first 1 million views.

In 2006, Google made a record takeover when it bought YouTube for $1,65 billion. At that time, the video hosting company employed only 65 people, and its office was located in a rented room above a pizzeria in San Mateo, California. Later, Time magazine named YouTube the invention of the year, and also placed a computer screen with the platform’s interface on the December cover, which usually announces the person of the year, with the caption: “Yes, you. You control the information age. Welcome to your world.”

Dyson: From 5 powerful vacuum cleaner prototypes to triumph

In 1978, vacuum cleaners had several drawbacks. First, over time, they lost their power due to the fact that the dust bags became clogged with dirt. Secondly, these devices required constant investment, because the bags could break at any moment – this was beneficial for manufacturers, but buyers constantly spent money on new consumables. The first problem was faced by James Dyson, the owner of a construction wheelbarrow factory. To solve the problem of clogging, Dyson turned to one of the inventors – he created a cyclone installation that eliminated pollution due to powder: using centrifugal force, the installation caught all the particles. James Dyson decided to transfer this idea to vacuum cleaners.

His factory already had a history of innovation: before that, they replaced the wheels that were buried in the loose earth during the operation of wheelbarrows with balls to avoid this. The Dyson vacuum cleaner was supposed to have huge suction power and work without a trash bag at all: this idea came from the inventor when he saw how workers collected sawdust in the same way. Dyson signed his first contract with the Japanese company Apex, and in 1986 the G-force vacuum cleaner was released, named after the force of gravity (Gravitation).

With money received from a Japanese company and a $1 million loan, James Dyson opened his own company with a research center. There appeared the first vacuum cleaner from Dyson – DC01. powered by cyclones. Prior to the DC01, Dyson built 5 prototypes in five years.

In 2017, the engineer decided to assemble his own electric car, spending £500 million from his personal funds on the development of the project. According to the project, it was supposed to be a huge crossover 5 m long, with 24-inch wheels and two 200 kW electric motors. In 2019, the idea was abandoned, as the car turned out to be too expensive.

Apple: from the garage in the house of Steve Jobs’ parents to Apple Park

The history of Apple begins in 1976 in the garage of Steve Jobs’ parents: there, together with Steve Wozniak, Jobs assembled the first 50 Apple I copies. due to the lack of fans (which, despite the proposals of Joanna Hoffman, Steve Jobs, who believed that then the computers would be too noisy, refused) and the built-in hard drive, soon lost market demand.

In 1985, Steve Jobs was fired from his own company, but, returning there in 1997 and finding Apple on the verge of bankruptcy (in 1996, the company’s market share fell to 4% compared to 16% in the late 1980s), the inventor begins to build an “apple” empire. At one of the meetings, Jobs created a table in which he described the criteria for devices that people need: “custom, professional, desktop and portable.” He was convinced that to be successful at Apple, they had to stop making unnecessary products.

Instagram: from location sharing to photos, comments, likes and stories

Initially, Instagram creator Kevin Systrom wanted to release an app similar to his favorite Foursquare service, where you could visit a place and share its geolocation with friends. Systrom decided that such a platform could become more interesting if users still shared photos. Then he launched the Burnb app, designed to schedule meetings, share locations and images. The functionality of Burnb was too big – it turned away users, but most liked to share photos.

Together with programmer Mike Krieger, Systrom rebuilt the application, removing all functionality except for photos, likes and comments, and on October 6, 2010, the world met Instagram.

At the very beginning of the journey, the service had two competitors: Hipstamatic with excellent filters, but without the ability to conveniently communicate with friends, and Facebook, where it was difficult to upload photos. But by the end of 2010, more photo-sharing apps hit the market, including PicPlz, Burstn, and Path. It was possible to bypass Instagram competitors thanks to Snoop Dogg and Justin Bieber, the number of subscribers to whose accounts grew rapidly.

Angry Birds: From the “King of the Cabbage World” to Angry Birds and Green Pigs

The history of Angry Birds, which in 2012 reached over 1 billion downloads, began in 2003, when Hewlett Packard and Nokia held a competition to develop the best mobile game. The winner was “King of the Cabbage World” – a game created by Niklas Head, Jarno Väkeväinen and Kim Dickert. It was Sumea who bought it, renaming it the “War of the Moles”. It was the world’s first real-time mobile multiplayer game.

Later, Hedom, Väkeväinen and Dickert made about 50 games, but all their applications failed, the developers were on the verge of bankruptcy. Then the designer Jaakko Iisalo showed three friends his work with the image of round birds. After several months of creating the game and many transformations, Niklas Head saw how his mother in the process of cooking was distracted by the final version of development – and Angry Birds had its first user success. Now, almost ten years after the game’s release, the Finnish company Rovio, which owns Angry Birds, has hundreds of millions of euros in revenue.