The Decathlon Club
When 10 zeros isn't enough zeros
In my years at Spotify, a thorny problem loomed over everything I worked on: How do you innovate when a bigger tech giant can copy your idea and bundle it directly into their platform? Or can rewire distribution to bypass you altogether, so millions of potential users never even see what you’ve built?
This challenge isn’t unique to Spotify. It’s an existential issue for many tech companies that came of age in the 2010s – Airbnb, Pinterest, Shopify, Uber & Lyft, Slack, Snap, Discord, and a few dozen more.
On the one hand, this cohort has been incredibly successful and surprisingly durable. Most reach hundreds of millions of users, in the process creating whole new nouns and verbs ("pinning", "tweeting", "ridesharing", "zooming"). Many were able to marry those product innovations to business model innovations, and emerge as $10B+ public companies. 10 zeros, the price of entry into the Decathlon Club.
But there’s always a sense of uncertainty. Because you’re throwing a killer party, that’s being hosted in someone else's backyard. And last time I checked, 12 zeros is a lot bigger than 10 zeros.
This looming pressure tends to forge an approach to product development that I think is unique to these types of companies. I also happen to think this makes them some of the most interesting places to build.
And I don't see enough concrete examples shared about how product development in the face of this existential problem is different, why those differences exist, and how to lean into them.
My goal is to shine a light on what it’s like to build innovative products at this class of company, based on what I’ve seen and what I’ve learned from my peers.
It’s just a small, personal project, but I think it’ll be interesting to anyone curious about developing tech products in the shadow of tech giants — particularly, designers, researchers/DS, product managers or marketers, and product-minded engineers.
If this hits home for you, then follow along for future posts!