you left me on read...
Snapchat's genius feature + 5-Hour Energy's distribution hack, Bezos's obsession with octopuses, and how Pinterest got off the ground
Happy Sunday everyone!
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👻 Don’t Leave Us On Read!
📲 TikTok Video Views: 400,000
The founders of Snapchat were genius for this.
Snapchat was founded in 2011 by three Stanford students and was mainly used for sexting in its early days.
That was until the founders added this one key feature: the read receipt.
By adding open notifications Snapchat’s founders created a social obligation, instantly making the stakes around conversations higher. Shortly after adding this feature, the proportion of snaps sent during the day jumped to 80%, and its origins as a sexting app were officially over
You could argue stories, streaks, and snap maps were also revolutionary but read receipts changed Snapchat from a sexting app to a social platform with 530 million users today.
🚪The Side Door Strategy
📲 TikTok Video Views: 920,000
The founder of 5-Hour Energy was genius for this.
Manoj Bagharva wanted to create an energy drink, but he knew from the start it would be impossible to compete next to Redbull and Monster.
Genius-ly, he designed his product as a shot instead of a full-sized drink and made it so it didn't need to be refrigerated. This meant 5-Hour Energy could be sold right next to the cash register, meaning every single customer would see it with 0 competition from the other energy brands.
The takeaway: When you're building a company with big powerful competitors, try and sneak up on them by finding a side door into the market.
🐙 Octo-Bezos
📲 TikTok Video Views: 65,000
Amazon has tentacles on everything and Jeff Bezos eats them for breakfast.
When Amazon acquired deals site Woot for $100M, Bezos celebrated by taking its founder Matt Rutledge to breakfast. Rutledge couldn't help but ask Bezos why he bought Woot.
As he looked down at his meal — a plate full of octopus, eggs, and potatoes—, Bezos responded, "When I look at the menu, you’re the thing I don’t understand, the thing I’ve never had. I must have the breakfast octopus.”
Now this fascination with octopuses might say more about Bezos than we realize.
This iconic political cartoon depicted standard oil as a monopolistic octopus and today, it might best describe Amazon.
📝 Do Things That Don’t Scale
📲 TikTok Video Views: 15,000
The founder of Pinterest was brilliant for this.
Today, Pinterest has 470 million active users, but it seemed like a flop when it first started.
For the first two years, the site had only a few thousand users and Pinterest's founder, Ben Silbermann, would personally write to every single one and ask them how it could be improved. He even gave users his phone numbers and would answer calls from them throughout the night.
Now, he stopped after the 7,000 user mark, but there's a great startup lesson here: Doing things that don't scale can really build a loyal community around your product.
We lived this advice by inviting our 60K+ fanbase to reach out to Our Future on Instagram. We got nearly 100 messages, and replied to every single one, so feel free to say hi on IG @ourfuturehq.
🎙 Reader Profile: Tofe Evans
In this bonus section, we ask our incredible readers to share a bit about themselves and how they’re looking at our future.
1) The Backstory 📖: My name is Tofe Evans and I am from Brisbane Australia. I run a business called 'Soundboard' that helps podcasters streamline their process so they can focus solely on recording the episodes and connecting with their audience.
2) Life or Work Hack 🧠: Be conscious of what to consume i.e. food/content/people around you. The more you feed into the negatives, the harder it becomes to thrive.
3) #1 Content Rec ☝️: Shoe Dog (A Memoir by the Creator of Nike) by Phil Knight. The audiobook is incredible and inspiring AF.
4) Advice 🗣: Don't be afraid to try new things.
5) Help me 🙋♂️: Listen to my podcast 'Soundboard with Tofe'.
It's a personal journey about 3 things: 1. Podcast tips and insights. 2. What I've learned from podcasting. 3. My journey and BTS of growing Soundboard. Listen: Apple, Spotify.
5) Follow me 🔗: LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok
This section is open to all readers! Do you want to be featured in our next profile to our thousands of subscribers? Just fill out this form!
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