Lesson: Moats and Flywheels
April 30, 2016 – 10:18 pmIt's bloody hard to build something new into the world. Don't let anyone tell you it's easy: there's a lot of unfunded and unrecognised work that you have to do before you can get to the point where fame and/or fortune arrive. And once you've finished the painful birth of your new service or product into the world, maybe even defining an entirely new product category or unserviced market segment, dozens of unimaginative parasites will appear from nowhere and try to eat your lunch. Hapara had this: we have a track record of beautiful firsts. First Education solution for Google Apps, first device management for Chromebooks. And, sure enough, as soon as we'd proven that Google Apps could be improved for educators, Google popped up and entered the space with Classroom. Dozens of companies sprung up to help educators manage Chromebooks. I like to think that the Hapara team do it better ...