Roblox: Dawn of the Metaverse - Meritech Capital

“If you see a constellation of new companies, tackling largely the same problem, being birthed AND you can’t understand why they are growing so popular, then chances are a new category is being born.” –Bob Kagle, Benchmark’s co-founder. In early 2005 as an EIR at Benchmark I was scouring a list of the top #100-500 fastest-growing internet websites and methodically using every one of them. One trend stuck out: about half a dozen short-form user-uploaded video sites were growing extraordinarily fast and I couldn't understand why. “You've probably found a new and important category of company,” Bob Kagle told me. “‘Important’ because if consumers are flocking to them all at a super-fast rate, then these companies are by definition offering something of value that the consumers can't get somewhere else. And ‘New’ because it's different enough from things you've seen in the past that you can't easily analogize from what you know before.” He was spot on. Over the next 18 months, YouTube was

“If you see a constellation of new companies, tackling largely the same problem, being birthed AND you can’t understand why they are growing so popular, then chances are a new category is being born.” –Bob Kagle, Benchmark’s co-founder. In early 2005 as an EIR at Benchmark I was scouring a list of the top #100-500 fastest-growing internet websites and methodically using every one of them. One trend stuck out: about half a dozen short-form user-uploaded video sites were growing extraordinarily fast and I couldn't understand why. “You've probably found a new and important category of company,” B