Snapchat
I have been observing the meteoric rise of these start-ups into multi-billion dollar companies.
And one question began to bug me, what does it take to conceive such disruptive ideas?
Because it is evident that there are still many systems that are yearning for disruption: banking, insurance, investment wealth management, aviation, health and so forth. How can we develop that capacity to come up with such ideas?
I think the answers lie within us, from our daily experiences and disappointments.
We can translate them into big things. Whether you spend hours in a long queue and fill in too many forms to open a bank account, wait for a train or bus for a long time or find it difficult to find a cheap restaurant in town, solutions to these frustrations have the potential to become large enterprises.
Convert your disappointments into opportunities to create a new and better way of doing things.
Monetize them.
Now, back to the question I posed earlier on, what does it take to conceive disruptive ideas?
It is not rocket science; it is simple.
Snapchat
BUSINESS
Snapchat, officially launched in September 2011, works just like our human face to face conversations. Created amid the strong base and followership of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that appeared untouchable, Snapchat came in and changed the scene altogether.
The norm is that all the information on the internet is saved and stored digitally, but Snapchat took a different approach by emulating what happens in our lives. Our moments are temporary, and that is what they modeled. This new invention attracted Facebook’ s attention which unsuccessfully bided to acquire it for $ 3 billion.
In 2013, they launched an absorbing feature called Stories, which are longer snaps lasting for 24 hours. Last year in 2014, they started Discover, which delivers content from media companies like National Geographic to users meaning that the company gets unparalleled attention from the users, most of which are young people.
By January this year, Snapchat had daily video views of more than 7 billion, giving Facebook stiff competition. It has more than 100 million users and what is a surprise to many is that is it valued at $ 16 billion, after a $ 175 million venture capital funding round this year.
It is all about believing in yourself and executing the idea because the idea you have may potentially be the next big thing.