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Havish Gupta
Figuring Out • 1m
ViaWeb, the Shopify of 1900s! So, in 1990s, when the world was Still trying to adapt to the internet, Paul Graham along with his 2 friends were working on something big! They were making a tool that helped people make and manage their online stores with just a web browser. This tool was Launched in 1996 as webgen and was later renamed as viaweb. It was a low code as well as no code website that helped anyone build their online stores and start selling stuff without the need of anyone. The best thing about it was that it optimised product pages automatically which helped business gain more organic reach (basically automatic SEO) But even with such a great product, it wasn't an instant hit. Thus, Paul and his team mannually emailed each of his potential customers. There by doing things that don't scale (as YC advises) And this strategy, kinda worked. As In 1997 it had about 500 users and 6 months it had 1070 paying Users. While the growth wasn't that big, Yahoo anyways aquired it for $49 Million and renamed it to Yahoo! Stores. And then, about 7 years later, Paul Graham started Y-Combinater.
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