Trevor Burnham

The con­ven­tional wisdom says that winning a micro VC com­pe­ti­tion like Y Com­bi­na­tor or Tech­Stars takes a bold new idea, some­thing no one else is doing (or, at least, not doing well). And that’s usually the case. But if you look closely, many of the projects they’ve funded—in fact, many of the most suc­cess­ful ones—are almost iden­ti­cal in concept to well-​​established rivals with massive brand recog­ni­tion and deep pockets. The trick is that those older rivals aren’t just old; they’ve gone stale.

Pos­ter­ous is a poster child for this category. Their idea: hosted blogs. Their biggest rival: Google’s Blogger, which has been around for more than a decade now—and barely changed in that time. In a way, it can’t: Blogger is one of the most popular websites around. Mess with the formula, and they might get New Coke’d. So Pos­ter­ous comes in with their hip, clean, fresh design, seamless inte­gra­tion with Facebook and Twitter (and, yes, Blogger), and an emphasis on mobile devices, and they’re attract­ing users like crazy.

But Pos­ter­ous didn’t just succeed with the same idea as the dod­der­ing, decrepit Blogger. They were also fol­low­ing the popular Tumblr by a meager two years, and the sites are in close com­pe­ti­tion for new features. But Pos­ter­ous’ bor­der­line pre­pos­ter­ous devotion to sim­plic­ity dis­tin­guishes them from everyone else in a crowded field. Tumblr seemed fresh when it started, but guess what? It’s not 2007 anymore. If you don’t watch your back, stal­e­ness can catch up quick.

Pos­ter­ous’ pitch is three words: “Dead simple blogging.” I’d cut it down to two: Blogger, fresher.

[Update, 1/​19/​10: A pre­cisely contrary opinion may be found here. We fun­da­men­tally agree that design is extremely impor­tant, but disagree over which of the two top-​​notch sites has the better design. I believe that Tumblr’s pop­u­lar­ity is mainly due to first-​​mover advan­tage. The truth will out.]

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