Every few years a great unbundling occurs In 2010, Andrew Parker wrote a defining post about the "unbundling" of Craigslist where he outlined the opportunity to carve out niche products from broad horizontal networks like Craigslist. The broad networks are everything to everyone, the niche ones are something special to a certain group. If you add up the value creation of the vertical companies (ie: Airbnb, Zillow, Stubhub, Etsy etc) it is greater than the sum of its parts (i.e: Craigslist). It turns out going vertical, is pretty profitable.
Would you be able to quickly expand on, "create a brand that people fall in love with?" For example, how did Discord create a distinct brand that appealed to the gaming community?
I still remember when Andrew's post first came out 10 years ago. Crazy it's been a decade!
This update is extremely apt. My concern with these kinds of markets is that consumer behavior is extremely finicky, brand more important that ever with so many options.
I wonder if there will ever be an unbundling of Wikipedia?
Hey Greg, I have been thinking and wanting to unbundle a reddit page that I follow for some time now, and when I heard you come on Sam and Shaan's podcast and talk about it, I knew I needed to just start and stop waiting! Thanks for the motivation and validating my thoughts of the unbundling of reddit communities.
Hi Greg, great article! Thanks for sharing.
Would you be able to quickly expand on, "create a brand that people fall in love with?" For example, how did Discord create a distinct brand that appealed to the gaming community?
We unbundled a Canva's feature and sold it for $5000.
I built YVisuals, an app with visual templates inspired by Jack Butcher and the likes.
It is classic unbundling in process. I realized it only when Katt Risen pointed it out.
Read about it here: https://nocodeexits.substack.com/p/how-a-tiny-canva-alternative-got
Great analysis.
Please do one unbundling article on fin tech.
Are there any examples of how to build MVP and get first 1000 users for such Reddit unbundling?
How do you do the unbundling if the mods ban all your posts on the reddit lol
Love the article thoughts here!
Great article - data science tools tracking these trends should come in handy to find the fastest growing subreddits
I still remember when Andrew's post first came out 10 years ago. Crazy it's been a decade!
This update is extremely apt. My concern with these kinds of markets is that consumer behavior is extremely finicky, brand more important that ever with so many options.
I wonder if there will ever be an unbundling of Wikipedia?
Hey Greg, I have been thinking and wanting to unbundle a reddit page that I follow for some time now, and when I heard you come on Sam and Shaan's podcast and talk about it, I knew I needed to just start and stop waiting! Thanks for the motivation and validating my thoughts of the unbundling of reddit communities.
This is a great post Greg. Subbed!
Trying to understand how this looks like when the problem gets solved by a new company. Is this something like this:
Community (Reddit) offering discovery and “basic features” as part of the larger platform
Needs are underserved
> Are there consumers producers?
(Maybe a marketplace) e.g Airbnb
> Are there quality issues and maybe need to do specific things to their community such as voice calling?
(Maybe an improved community) e.g Discord