When Facebook came around, wouldnt the addressable market have looked tiny? Basically US based college campuses.
Or was Zuckerberg already envisioning opening it up and spreading it far beyond college (and maybe high school) campuses?
Or was Zuckerberg already envisioning opening it up and spreading it far beyond college (and maybe high school) campuses?
For example, snapchat started with LA teenagers. Facebook started with harvard, then ivy league colleges, etc. Uber was licenced black car services in SF only at first, etc.
And it's funny - the startups that try to start with "we're revolutionizing the world" end up over-promising. The ones like you mentioned actually do. Not only just in starting in one market, but focusing on one customer segment, or one feature, or one vertical.
This is really hard advice to take ..and in my limited experience also hard to convince investors of. But I think he's right ...and it amounts to getting in the game / get out of the building etc.
Even if that's true and they pitched investors on a kind of online campus hub for students, they woukd still have been going after a pretty big market - they could sell software/functionality to schools and/or they could sell advertising (reaching young people is quite valuable for brands since young people tend to have less fixed opinions and loyalties as consumers).
It may well be that investors thought it could grow to compete with MySpace. Others might have just thought being an essential part of every student's life would be a good enough outcome. (After all, there's plenty of VC in "ed tech" these days).