Loading video...

Video Failed to Load

Go Home

5. Tupperware (1946) Earl Tupper created airtight containers from plastic waste. But they didn't sell in stores - until a woman named Brownie Wise suggested home parties. That sales innovation created the modern direct-selling industry.

1,162,701 views • 1 year ago •via X (Twitter)

15 Comments

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

11 companies built around a single product: 1. Crocs (2002)

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

Everyone called Crocs "ugly." Doctors & chefs loved them because they were comfortable & easy to clean. Now they sell 150 million pairs annually. Sometimes, being "ugly" pays off.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

2. LEGO (1932) Started making wooden toys during the Great Depression. Switched to plastic bricks in 1949. One simple idea: Every brick must fit with every other brick. That commitment to compatibility still drives them today.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

3. Spanx (2000) Sara Blakely cut the feet off her pantyhose to create seamless underwear. She wrote her own patent to save $3000. That resourcefulness turned into a billion-dollar revolution in shapewear.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

4. Play-Doh (1956) Started as a wallpaper cleaner company about to go bankrupt. Then a teacher used it in her classroom as modeling clay. That pivot to children's toys saved the company and created a cultural icon.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

6. WD-40 (1953) The name tells the story: It took 40 attempts to get the formula right. Scientists created it to prevent Atlas rockets from rusting. Now most people use it to stop squeaky hinges. Over 70 years later, they still use the exact same formula.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

7. Sriracha (1980) David Tran fled Vietnam with nothing but a hot sauce recipe. He never advertised. Never changed the recipe. Never raised prices. The sauce grew purely through word of mouth into a global phenomenon.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

8. Red Bull (1987) Found a Thai energy drink used by truckers to stay awake. Modified it for Western tastes. Spent 20 years perfecting ONE drink while others launched dozens of flavors.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

9. Duracell (1924) Started making mercury batteries for military equipment. For 100 years, they've had one mission: Make batteries that last longer. That singular focus made them a household name.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

10. Carmex (1937) Alfred Woelbing made the first batch in his kitchen to treat cold sores. The recipe was so perfect, they never changed it. 87 years later, it's still made exactly the same way.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

11. White Claw (2016) Saw an opportunity: Health-conscious drinkers wanted something lighter than beer. Created hard seltzer when no one knew what it was. Now every major beverage company is trying to copy them.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

Success isn't about doing everything. It's about doing ONE thing better than anyone else. You don't need a list of products or a suite of services to be successful. You can do more with less.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

A bit about me: I built 2 multimillion-dollar businesses without investment, selling my first for $60M after starting it in high school. Now, I'm building a multi-million dollar gaming startup—and writing on X about how to do more with less.

Neal Taparia's profile picture
Neal Taparia1 year ago

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this: 1. Follow me @nealtaparia to learn how to be a work-less, do-more entrepreneur 2. Repost this thread if you found it helpful

Artz AY's profile picture
Artz AY1 year ago

The company bankrupt because the product is too durable and no one buy new one.

Related Videos

openai and anthropic probably have terrible sales reps they're talented, but they've never actually had to sell anything. ben horowitz said it best in a recent conversation: "right now with openai and anthropic, everybody wants to buy ai. they're already predisposed to buy." that's order-taking, not selling. let's zoom in on this distinction. 1) the order-taker problem cloudflare's CEO admitted in 2023 their product was so good that "many of our sales team succeeded largely by just taking orders." deals were like "fish jumping right in the boat." then the economy shifted and they fired 100 salespeople who'd contributed just 4% of new business. when your product sells itself, mediocre reps look like rockstars. they crush quota, win the president's club, and get promoted into leadership. nobody knows they can't actually sell until the fish stop jumping in the boat. 2) why hard sells matter ben won't shut up about ptc, a 90s cad/cam company. the product "wasn't that great." "the windshield wiper didn't work." but that forced discipline. you had to map accounts systematically, lay traps for competitors, and build airtight technical cases. his favorite hire was ryan gabrisco at databricks, who came from a company selling secure ftp as a public company. think about how good you have to be to make quota selling that. when ben hires sales leaders, he looks for people from companies where the product was hard to sell because that's the only way to test if someone can actually sell. 3) what happens when markets turn every hot market eventually cools. i'll give you a few examples. salesforce in 2001. facebook ads in 2012. aws in 2015. the order-takers got exposed every time. modern AI sales reps don't know how to qualify prospects who aren't already sold or how to systematically lock out competitors or how to build pipeline when inbound dries up. ben's story about hiring at Okta: two candidates, one super enthusiastic, the other said "let me talk to your customers first." ben told the ceo: "you want the guy qualifying YOU. that's what good salespeople do." 4) openai scaled their sales team from 10 to 500 people in under two years. anthropic is scaling fast too. but how would anyone know if they're good? you can't test sales ability when customers are lined up begging to buy. when real competition arrives, the kind where enterprises have three viable options and care about pricing, support, and vendor risk, AI companies will discover which GTM leaders can actually sell and which ones were just processing waitlists. 5) how to hire right if you're building a GTM team right now, think like a value investor. resumes don't matter. look for human capital that the market has significantly underpriced. someone who's had to sell a product that didn't sell itself, someone who's built discipline through necessity, not abundance (no order-takers). find the person who sold enterprise software at a company nobody's heard of. find the person who had to fight for every deal because the competitor was already embedded in the account. the person who figured out how to systematically lock out competition even when they were the underdog. those skills matter. for AI companies, the question is whether they can close deals when the market shifts. because when inbound dries up (it always does), you'll discover who can actually sell.

Courtne Marland

250,727 views • 4 months ago

A humble request From a Concerned Citizen of Koramangala 🙏 A citizen reported this and she said she live in the area. Her first spot in the morning at 7am is this ox chewing on food and plastic. She stepped out at 2am today for a walk and was surprised to see the ox spends so many hours here from night till early morning. While she is very glad the animal is getting the unused food, she request @deobbmp to cast some rules where food can be separated from the plastic bags - so both things serve their equal purpose. She also suggested that which are mention below 1. Making a designated area in the same street/or the back side (under a tree) where a drum can be placed. All brands can dump the unused food in the drum. They can collect plastic waste in plastic bags, but keep these bags out of reach of animals. 2. Specify timings of the drum. 12am-5am Between 5-6am municipality picks the leftover and then it goes to bin, not directly. 3. The staff working here are responsible for cleaning the branch out before closing. Allotting one of the staff to collect waste or leftover in one bucket through the day, so EOD dumping in common drum becomes hassle free. . This will also cater to better efficiency for municipal trucks that pick up the waste, as they wouldn’t require to sort the materials in separate bins. #bangalore #bengaluru #koramangala #wiprosignal #wiproparkbangalore Maheshwar Rao.M, IAS Greater Bengaluru Authority BBMP_SWM Cell bbmpcommissioner S. Lalitha ChristinMathewPhilip

Karnataka Portfolio

21,503 views • 1 month ago