BOOK REVIEW: HOW THEY STARTED DIGITAL

How They Started Digital is a book published in Nigeria by Beulahland Publications, with permission from Crimson Publishers UK. In the book, founders of various businesses like Wikipedia, Google, Twitter, Linkedln , eBay, Spotify, Tripadvisor, etc, are interviewed, and each of them is gracious enough to share their success story; how they started, the challenges they faced, and how they overcame those challenges. Below is a sneak peak of some stories that can be found in the book:

Wikipedia: Started in 2001 by Jimmy Wales [age: 34]. Jimmy’s interest in encyclopaedias began at an early age and in the 1990s, he decided to create a free online encyclopaedia using a software that would enable every user - not just programmers- to write and edit web information. He called this site; Nupedia. Nupedia was not a success due to various reasons such as the lack of a business plan on Jimmy’s part, a clunky software, and the lengthy process of sourcing contributors. In the end, Jimmy had to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate his idea and in 2001, Wikipedia was born. Wikipedia has faced its own challenges as well but despite this, it is still the largest general reference work on the internet and the sixth most popular website in the world as at the time of writing.

Mumsnet: Started in 2000 by Justine Roberts and Carrie Longton [age: 33 and 35]. The inspiration for mumsnet came to Justine after she experienced appalling childcare at a resort supposed to be ‘family-friendly’. She and Carrie decided to start a website that would enable parents swap useful information on everything regarding children and family. They planned to raise funds from advertisements placed on the site by relevant retailers. The idea was a novel one at the time and they soon started work on the test site which was eventually launched in 2000. Not long after this, however, the economic environment changed considerably and the pair did not get the funding they hoped for. This forced them to look for other ways of monetising the business and by 2002 they launched the first Mumsnet book, Mums on Babies. Other books, magazines, and television series have since been produced by Mumsnet and by 2012, the site was receiving 2.3 monthly visitors and a yearly turnover of $5 million.

Linkedln: Started in 2003 by Reid Hoffman [age: 35]. He experienced the challenges faced by most businesses, namely: raising capital for the business and having an edge over competitors.  However, he was eventually able to overcome the problem of finances and the system of encouraging value connections and discouraging random connections between members of Linkedln helped to set it apart from other social networks. By 2010 Linkedln was worth an estimated $2 billion.

There are many other such success stories in the book and unfortunately I cannot summarise them all. Suffice to say that the book is definitely worth reading, and for readers who are not necessarily interested in digital businesses but in other business types, other books worth reading in the series include: