I always love to hear stories of startups that start with one idea, learn more about the market, and then iterate or pivot to focus on where they find the real opportunity. It can be hard to do, it’s just human nature to never give up, keep trying to make something work, rather than taking a step back and learning how you could tweak your idea to do something that really resonates with people.
Y Combinator-backed Loom.com did just that, starting as a photosharing startup called Popset and evolving into a viable alternative to iCloud.
“co-founder Jan Senderek explained the team had realized that they were trying to solve the wrong problem with Popset – people weren’t lacking tools for group photo-sharing, but they did need a better way to organize and manage their photo libraries. Thus, Loom was born.” (Source – TechCrunch)
Loom has also started with a very nice branding advantage thanks to a solid domain, Loom.com. It’s not too often that you see a startup with a short, memorable 4L .COM like this right out of the gate but when it happens it means they can charge forward with marketing and not have to worry about a potential brand change later down the road.
Congrats to the entire Loom.com team, it’s hard to admit that you were trying to solve the wrong problem, even harder to pivot and actually change your product, but if you look at some of the most successful startups on the planet, many of them did just this.
Yes very nice name. When I think startups can now get Poom.com, Hoon.com, … and hundreds catchy short names like this at Catchy.com only for hundred dollars I realize we have done a good job all these years buying such names and convincing owners to list them for sale in such marketplace. Now anyone starting a new biz can can launch it with a terrific catchy name without risk and with a low budget.