Comment by bryanlarsen
2 days ago
Some people even figured it out in the 80's. Sears founded and ran Prodigy, a large BBS and eventually ISP. They were trying to set themselves up to become Amazon. Not only that, Prodigy's thing (for a while) was using advertising revenue to lower subscription prices.
Your "Netflix over dialup" analogy is more accessible to this readership, but Sears+Prodigy is my favorite example of trying to make the future happen too early. There are countless others.
Today I learned that Sears founded Prodigy!
Amazing how far that company has fallen; they were sort of a force to be reckoned with in the 70's and 80's with Craftsman and Allstate and Discover and Kenmore and a bunch of other things, and now they're basically dead as far as I can tell.
On the topic of how Sears used to be high-tech: back in 1981, when IBM introduced the IBM PC, it was the first time that they needed to sell computers through retail. So they partnered with Sears, along with the Computerland chain of computer stores, since Sears was considered a reasonable place for a businessperson to buy a computer. To plan this, meetings were held at the Sears Tower, which was the world's tallest building at the time.
Bought my IBM PC from Sears back in the day. Still have the receipt.
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Wow, I hadn't thought about Computerland for quite a while. That was my go-to to kill some time at the mall when I was a teen.
My favorite anecdote about Sears is from Starbucks current HQs - the HQs used to be a warehouse for Sears. Before renovation the first floor walls next to the elevators used to have Sears' "commitment to customers" (or something like that).
To me it read like it was written by Amazon decades earlier. Something about how Sears promises that customers will be 100% satisfied with the purchase, and if for whatever reason that is not the case customers can return the purchase back to Sears and Sears will pay for the return transportation charges.
Craftsman tools have almost felt like a life-hack sometimes; their no-questions-asked warranties were just incredible.
My dad broke a Craftsman shovel once that he had owned for four years, took it to Sears, and it was replaced immediately, no questions asked. I broke a socket wrench that I had owned for a year and had the same story.
I haven't tested these warranties since Craftsman was sold to Black and Decker, but when it was still owned by Sears I almost exclusively bought Craftsman tools as a result of their wonderful warranties.
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The Sears Catalog was the Amazon of its day.
:-) Then it's going to blow your mind that CompuServe (while not founded by them) was a product of H&R Block.
There were quite a few small ISP's in the 1990's. Even Bill Gothard[0] had one.
[0]https://web.archive.org/web/19990208003742/http://characterl...
Prodigy predates ISPs (internet service providers). Before the web had matured a little in 1993 the internet was too technically challenging to interest most consumers except maybe for email, and Prodigy was formed in 1984 -- and although it offered email, it was walled-garden email: a Prodigy user could not exchange email with the internet till the mid-1990s at which time Prodigy might have become an ISP for a few years before going out of business.
At a previous job I worked under a guy who started his own ISP in the early 90’s. I would have loved to have been part of that scene but I was only like four when that happened.
[dead]
Blame short sighted investors asking Sears to "focus"
They weren't wrong. Its core business in what is still a viable-enough sector collapsed. Or if it were truly well-managed, running an ISP and a retailer should have been enough insight to be Amazon.
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For more on this -- and how Sears had everything it needed (and more) to be what Amazon became -- see this comment from a 2007 MetaFilter thread: https://www.metafilter.com/62394/The-Record-Industrys-Declin...
The untold story, is the names of individuals fighting office politics that lead to that (not) happening.
This is a great example that I hadn't heard of and reminds me of when Nintendo tried to become an ISP when they built the Family Computer Network System in 1988
A16Z once talked about the scars of being too early causes investors/companies to get fixed that an idea will never work. Then some new younger people who never got burned will try the same idea and things will work.
Prodigy and the Faminet probably fall into that bucket along with a lot of early internet companies where they tried things early, got burned and then possibly were too late to capitalise when it was finally the right time for the idea to flourish
Reminds me of Elon not taking a no for an answer. He did it twice, with a massive success.
A true shame to see how he's completely lost track with Tesla, the competition particularly from China is eating them alive. And in space, it's a matter of years until the rest of the world catches up.
And now, he's ran out of tricks - and more importantly, on public support. He can't pivot any more, his entire brand is too toxic to touch.
Lucky for him, the US government is keeping him from being eaten alive in the USA at least.
I remember that one time we tried to drastically limit Japanese imports to protect the American car industry, which basically created the Lexus LS400, one of the best cars ever made.
I dont know, you could argue that maybe GM with the EV1 was the 'too early' EV and Tesla was just at the right moment. Same goes for SpaceX, The idea of a reusable launcher was not a new idea and studied by NASA. I think they did some test vehicles.
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On the flip side, they didn't actually learn that lesson... that it was a matter of immature tech with relatively limited reach... by the time the mid-90's came through, "the internet is just a fad" was pretty much the sentiment from Sears' leadership...
They literally killed their catalog sales right when they should have been ramping up and putting it online. They could easily have beat out Amazon for everything other than books.
My cousin used to tell me that things works because they were the right thing at the right time. I think he gave the idea of amazon only.
But I guess in startup culture, one has to die trying the idea of right time, as sure one can do surveys to feel like it, but the only way we can ever find if its the right time is the users feedback when its lauched / over time.
Newton at Apple is another great one, though they of course got there.
They sure did. This reminds me of when I was in the local Mac Dealer right after the iPod came out. The employees were laughing together saying “nobody is going to buy this thing”.
the problem is ISP became a Utility, not some fountain of unlimited growth.
What you're arguing is that AI is fundamentally going to be a utility, and while that's worth a floor of cash, it's not what investors or the market clamor for.
I agree though, it's fundamentally a utility, which means theres more value in proper government authority than private interests.
Sears started Prodigy to become Amazon, not Comcast.
The product itself determines wether ita a utility, not the business interest. Assuming democracy works correctly. Only a dysfunctional government ignores natural monopolies.