The article describes an idea that there are startup opportunities to be found by identifying horizontal platforms (e.g. Craigslist) that cover a lot of ground and build something that handles just one use case (e.g. job posts) covered by that platform. The article calls it "unbundling".
A while ago I was involved in a startup that attempted to compete with a dominant horizontal platform in this manner (Craigslist, in fact). The ideas were fine, the people were good, but we had a lot of trouble getting traction. Turns out, Craigslist is where the people are, and if you want to build a marketplace, you need people. Features turn out to be secondary. It's unsurprising to me that, in the end, the best competition for Craigslist came from another big horizontal platform with tons of people: Facebook.
I'm not actually trying to say that "unbundling" can't ever work. Maybe Zapier is ripe for it, as the author suggests. This is just what happened to come to mind when I read this story.
A while ago I was involved in a startup that attempted to compete with a dominant horizontal platform in this manner (Craigslist, in fact). The ideas were fine, the people were good, but we had a lot of trouble getting traction. Turns out, Craigslist is where the people are, and if you want to build a marketplace, you need people. Features turn out to be secondary. It's unsurprising to me that, in the end, the best competition for Craigslist came from another big horizontal platform with tons of people: Facebook.
I'm not actually trying to say that "unbundling" can't ever work. Maybe Zapier is ripe for it, as the author suggests. This is just what happened to come to mind when I read this story.
Interesting overall. Thanks for the post OP!