Jason Goldberg: You Can’t Iterate Yourself To A Business Model

Why bang your head against the wall doing something that’s not working? In this 99 talk, CEO Jason Goldberg breaks down the thinking and execution behind Fab.com’s famous pivot from gay social networking site (Fabulous) to a design-obsessed online marketplace. He shares tips on when to call it quits on a startup, how to find your “one thing,” and the importance of authenticity.

Jason Goldberg is a serial entrepreneur, passionate about designing products that enrich millions of people’s lives. Prior to leading Fab.com, he founded fabulis, socialmedian (sold to XING AG), and Jobster. Jason also served as Chief Product Officer at XING in Hamburg, Germany in 2009.The first start-up he worked at was Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in 1991 and 1992, which led to a 6 1/2 year stint working in the White House.Jason resides in New York City with his partner Christian and their dog Rupey, aptly named after the Indian currency as Jason has traveled to India more than 30 times the past 5 years to work alongside the best web development team on the planet. Jason holds an MBA from Stanford University, and writes about entrepreneurship on his blog, betashop.com.

Fab.com Betashop.com @betashop

Comments (5)

Justin

“If you can’t figure out something in a year, just throw it out and start something else. You can’t iterate your way to a business model. You’ll know when you’re on to something.” – my favourite quote by far.
Mike Harrop

Clever phrase but… the best ideas are born unbusinessmodelable, or some company would already be doing them. You iterate aka chop bits off until you get a business model. Angels pay the bills while you do this. If you’re a startup druggie, you iterate as long as possible without a model.
clued

Good talk.

Not sure I agree that “you can’t iterate your way to a business model’… let’s hope twitter don’t take that to heart
Jessica Balbuena

I think If you have a good insight and consumer need to start with, you can iterate yourself into a better/great product. If your insight is off and people find no “reason for being” for your product or the competition fully meet their need (the switching cost is higher than any added value you could offer or the features competitor offer is not 100% it could be but is good enough for the people) then iteration won’t make a difference. Of course you won’t know if competitor’s offer is good enough at the start without trying your idea, so it’s always nice to test your theory but as jason says know when to get out. Test to see if it works, if it doesn’t get out of it fast.
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