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I agree with this and in general think the degree of randomness in outcomes and survivorship biases aren't fully appreciated by a lot of folks examining the startup world.

With that said, I do think there is one trait that is common to successful products/projects ...they were successfully sold.

Now this might seem obvious after the fact but I think the amount of effort expended in 'selling' should be somewhat proportional to the novelty (and or perceived ineffectiveness )of the product. If you don't have an evangelist (on your team or external) that can sell the idea to customers, employees, business partners, investors ... your chances of success are greatly reduced.

And even then pure randomness and timing (you could be too early/too late ) will drive the final outcome.

>How does the author explain the huge success of the original UNIX? It violates everything he says.

The original Unix was not created as some sort of grand solve-the-world's-problems vision. It happened because some people on project like that, Multics, said, "fuck it, let's spend a month building something simple that we can actually use." Market 1: themselves.

From there, they found other people with needs and they solved them. Market 2 was another department that needed a word processor; they made one. Then more Bell Labs departments needed an OS for their shiny new computers, so that was market 3.

So yes, the history of Unix very much fits with the "find a market and solve their problems" notion. It's true that they weren't thinking strategically about long-term world domination. But that's sort of the point of the "identify a market" notion: vast, airy thoughts about strategy often lead to product that nobody uses. Whereas focusing solving very specific needs of actual users (that is, your chosen market) is frequently a path to success.

It's basically the same deal with Facebook. Facemash was just Zuckerberg fucking around. When he found that it had real resonance for people, he tried something more ambitious in the space. But he didn't say, "I'm going to totally change the way humans interact by creating a technological marvel." He didn't spend millions of dollars or years building amazing infrastructure. He made a small, basic product for a single school. Only when he had proof that he had product-market fit did he worry about scaling up. And he got that product-market fit by paying attention to the market, his fellow students.

MVP and shipping. Then add value adding features and review customer fedback.

Yes. I think both also proceeded by making major inroads into very small markets before expanding. Facebook in particular didn't get their first users by launching something adequate for a lot of people. They launched something that was a home run for a small group. Then they went school by school, dominating each as they went.

The truth is that each adopter makes their own decision; the more you can make something that's stellar for one person, the better a base you have to expand from.

Another one: Doing market research well is really hard, and not something the person/group has a lot of experience in. It also might result in finding out that there isn't really a market which means we would have to abandon or drastically change our plan, and we really don't want to do that. So, let's just not bother and assume there is a market!

Then there's the fun dynamic where if you are being really honest with yourself you don't care too much about whether there is a market or not, you just want to see the idea in your head become reality, because it would be super cool and you will feel good for having been able to do it. Which might be fine for a one-person side project, but otherwise not so much.

An MVP IS a test for a market. If people like Facemash, maybe they'll like a Facebook. Ken Thompson implemented the first Unix in a month[1]. Neither started out huge.

[1] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050414215646742

"...the number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected..." - Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, June 1972

One thing to remember, too, is that the original Facebook was quite different from what we have today. It focused on personal profiles, and had features of almost like a dating site. A huge use case was organizing parties (I know that because that's what we did as a group of students). Newsfeed as a timewaster is a feature that evolved only later. Messages were clunky and a non-thing.

Any product that has persisted is actually a series of products sharing same name, but each targeting a different demographic - oftentimes even actually same set of people but at different life stages. And as sibling comments point out, it is all about just trying and trying (and also, it would seem, having super convenient access to millions of people to try things on).

I'm reminded of a message from The Innovator's Dilemma by Clay Christensen. When PCs first came out, no one wanted them. When Honda motorcycles first came out, no one wanted them. When email systems first came out, no one wanted them. These things all flew in the face of the established norms, moving upmarket and eventually overtaking the market leaders. There were no markets for these things then, but these products created their own markets.

Of course, as you said, we don't know who the exact winners will be, but like the Richter scale, there are some indicators that can be helpful in determining the magnitude and general location of the next earth-shaking market movements. Christensen's framework recommends examining several of a product's consumer utility curves for exploitable inefficiencies in niche (and usually low-end) markets. E.g., laptop manufacturers value 2.5" hard drives for their form-factor and are less sensitive to price per GB. E.g., teenagers value the speed, ease, and essentialism of Snapchat and are willing to forgo access to an extended peer network on Facebook.

While we'll never know exactly what will succeed or fail, thinking about the market is almost always a productive activity that can certainly have a dramatic impact on outcomes.

Being a free OS with source code available helped it getting adopted by universities and 80's startups like SGI and Sun.