Billion-Dollar Dismissals

Shaan shares a list of products he completely misjudged as being too small or niche that later became massive companies.

"Here's a list of products that I was totally wrong about, meaning they were already working but I thought 'that's probably small, probably niche':

Calm and meditation apps - my buddy Alex was doing it, he was in my peer group, in our mastermind group, and I was like 'that's cute, I don't really understand what you're doing here, maybe you'll make some money, it'll be like a job.' I didn't fully understand it. Now there are multiple meditation apps that are billion-dollar companies, which seemed implausible at the time.

Snapchat - my username still has the word 'test' in it because I was like 'cool, but this is never gonna be a thing, this is just like a goofy kind of sexting thing. How big is the market for that?'

Airbnb - I met the founder of Couch Surfing before I heard about Airbnb. We hung out at my office and I thought 'what a crazy idea - go sleep in someone else's house on their extra couch or air mattress.' So when Airbnb came out, I thought 'great, you're trying to be Couch Surfing, how ambitious.' Couch Surfing topped out at maybe $100-200 million, while Airbnb today is like a hundred-billion-dollar company.

Uber - Uber was black car limos. I was like 'cool, rich people in San Francisco who take black cars - small idea. I don't understand why the founder of StumbleUpon is doing this, but whatever. I guess rich guys just lose touch and start working on niche things.'

Musically - I remember we were at the office trying to build social products, and Morgan, this guy who worked with me, was like 'hey, my daughter loves making these lip-sync videos on Musically.' The idea was recording yourself on video with music mixed in, lip-syncing and dancing. I was like 'okay cool Morgan, but can we get to work now? We're trying to build the next big thing here.' It's like someone showed you a briefcase full of cash and then you accidentally kicked it into the gutter."