How to know when to transition from “doing things that don’t scale”:
when the person who’s “doing the things that don’t scale” breaks from too much demand.
Examples from @unsplash:
when the person who’s “doing the things that don’t scale” breaks from too much demand.
Examples from @unsplash:
1. Submissions. Unsplash started as a tumblr with me picking 10 images every 10 days. 1 year in, we were getting too many submissions, so we invited others to curate. Eventually, we made an image submission tool that sped up the process 10x. 1.5 years after launch.
2. Search. Once we got to a couple hundred images, the site was pretty unusable w/o search. We could no longer pick 10 images every days to keep up with demand. We moved unsplash off tumblr. This was the first time we wrote custom code anyone could see. 1.5 years after launch.
3. API. When we launched our API, the first version of our marketing page was our pitch email. We closed the first api partners without any marketing page. Once we had enough demand where we couldn’t send emails fast enough, we made a marketing page. unsplash.com/developers
4 Ads. We sold the first ads with emails and keynote decks. 6 months in, got to a point where we had enough interest where making decks was taking us too long. We automated the deck: unsplash.com/brand-campaign…
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