🔍 SEARCH TOPIC: What was the name of the failed online game they were building when Slack was born, and what is the name of the popular photo-sharing site they built earlier in 2004?
FOUNDER HUNTERS SCAVENGER HUNT STATION 2 GUIDE
CASE FILE: #03-NET
STARTUP SCRAPPY SERIES
Station Card 03 / 06
Founders Reed Hastings & Marc Randolph
Current Giant Netflix
The Starting Year 1997 (Scotts Valley, CA)
The corporate legend says Hastings got mad because Blockbuster charged him a $40 late fee for a VHS of Apollo 13. However, co-founder Marc Randolph tells a different story. They wanted to start an e-commerce business but didn't know what to sell. Shipping VHS tapes was too expensive and fragile. Then, they heard of a brand-new invention: the DVD.
To test if DVDs could actually survive shipping without breaking, they walked to a local store in Santa Cruz, bought a music CD (DVDs weren't even widely available to buy yet), slid it into a plain blue greeting card envelope, and mailed it to Hastings' home. It arrived safely and completely scratch-free for the price of a single postage stamp.
In 2000, Netflix was bleeding money and losing to Blockbuster. Hastings and Randolph met with Blockbuster's CEO to offer a merger, proposing that Netflix would run Blockbuster's online brand.
🔍 SEARCH TOPIC: How much money did Netflix offer to sell themselves to Blockbuster for, and how did the Blockbuster executives react to the offer?
FOUNDER HUNTERS SCAVENGER HUNT STATION 3 GUIDE
CASE FILE: #04-SPA
STARTUP SCRAPPY SERIES
Station Card 04 / 06
Founder Sara Blakely
Current Giant Spanx
The Starting Year 1998 (Atlanta, GA)
Sara Blakely was 27 years old, selling fax machines door-to-door in the hot Florida sun. She was required to wear pantyhose, which she hated, but she liked how the control-top kept her body lines smooth under thin pants. However, she hated the thick, ugly seam line running over her toes when she wore open-toed shoes.
One night before a party, she took a pair of ordinary household scissors and sliced the feet off a pair of control-top pantyhose. It solved her toe problem, but the hose kept rolling up her legs all night. She spent the next two years researching hosiery fabrics, pitching old-school male manufacturers who kept laughing her out of their offices, and investing her entire life savings of $5,000.
Sara could not afford a patent attorney, so she wrote her own patent application using a library book. To get her first massive order into Neiman Marcus department stores, she had to pull off a legendary, highly awkward sales pitch.
🔍 SEARCH TOPIC: What shocking/bold action did Sara take during her meeting with the Neiman Marcus buyer in the corporate bathroom to close the sale?
FOUNDER HUNTERS SCAVENGER HUNT STATION 4 GUIDE
CASE FILE: #05-SHO
STARTUP SCRAPPY SERIES
Station Card 05 / 06
Founder Tobias Lütke
Current Giant Shopify
The Starting Year 2004 (Ottawa, ON)
Tobias Lütke loved snowboarding and wanted to launch an online retail store to sell high-end, custom snowboards. But when he tried to set up the website, he found the existing e-commerce systems (like Yahoo Store or Microsoft bCentral) absolutely horrific. They were slow, expensive, hard to customize, and required massive engineering knowledge.
Tobias decided to build his own custom e-commerce engine from scratch using an emerging coding language called Ruby on Rails. He launched his retail store, and while he sold a few snowboards, he realized other merchants were far more interested in the beautifully slick software he built to run the store than the actual boards themselves. He pivoted immediately to selling the platform.
To launch Shopify, the team had to bootstrap and run on very little cash, testing their concepts on real users before they ever raised capital.
🔍 SEARCH TOPIC: What was the original name of the custom online snowboard store Tobias Lütke founded in 2004 that ultimately became Shopify?
FOUNDER HUNTERS SCAVENGER HUNT STATION 5 GUIDE
CASE FILE: #06-INS
STARTUP SCRAPPY SERIES
Station Card 06 / 06
Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger
Current Giant Instagram
The Starting Year 2010 (San Francisco, CA)
Kevin Systrom wanted to build a location-based mobile check-in app (similar to Foursquare). He built a highly complex prototype that let users check in at locations, make plans, earn points, and post photos. It was loaded with complex features, buttons, menus, and options. However, users found it frustratingly cluttered and incredibly hard to use.
The founders sat down and carefully looked at user analytics. They realized people didn't care about checking in or making plans, but they *absolutely loved* sharing photos. Kevin and Mike made a radical decision: they brutally stripped away every single feature of the app except for photos, comments, and simple filters. They simplified it down to a 3-tap action and relaunched it under a brand new name.
The original location check-in app had a very unique, alcohol-inspired name. It failed, but within hours of launching their streamlined photo app, the servers crashed from massive traffic.
🔍 SEARCH TOPIC: What was the original, complex check-in app named, and what specific vintage camera types inspired the new name 'Instagram'?
FOUNDER HUNTERS SCAVENGER HUNT STATION 6 GUIDE
STATION #02: SLACK 5 PTS
Problem & Pivot: Their multiplayer online game failed commercially, but the internal messaging software they built to manage the split team was excellent.
🔍 Research Answer: The failed multiplayer online game was named "Glitch." In 2004, the same founders built another game that failed but spun out into the highly popular photo-sharing site Flickr.
STATION #03: NETFLIX 5 PTS
Problem & Proof: Wanted to do e-commerce but shipping VHS was too heavy; tested if the brand-new DVD format could survive mail by shipping a music CD in an envelope.
🔍 Research Answer: They offered to sell Netflix to Blockbuster for $50 Million in 2000. Blockbuster CEO John Antioco reportedly laughed at the offer and turned them down, thinking it was a tiny niche.
STATION #04: SPANX 5 PTS
Problem & MVP: Hated pantyhose seams showing through open-toed shoes while selling fax machines. Cut feet off control-top pantyhose as a crude prototype.
🔍 Research Answer: During her pitch to Neiman Marcus, Sara Blakely sensed she was losing the buyer. She took the buyer into the department store's public restroom and changed into her own Spanx prototype under her clothes to visually demonstrate the before-and-after change, closing the deal.
STATION #05: SHOPIFY 5 PTS
Problem & Pivot: Wanted to sell custom snowboards online but found e-commerce software slow/terrible. Built a custom platform which became far more valuable.
🔍 Research Answer: The original snowboard store Tobias Lütke founded in 2004 was called "Snowdevil."
STATION #06: INSTAGRAM 5 PTS
Problem & Pivot: Their original check-in app was too cluttered. They stripped away all features except photos, comments, and filters to simplify.
🔍 Research Answer: The original, highly complex app was called "Burbn" (named after Kevin's love for bourbon). The name "Instagram" is a portmanteau of "Instant Camera" and "Telegram," inspired by vintage Polaroid and Kodak Instamatic cameras.
Evaluation & Grading Rubric
Complete Log (30 Pts total): Each station is worth 5 Pts. Award 2 Pts for correctly describing the original problem/MVP, and 3 Pts for providing the verified scavenger search solution. Half-points may be awarded for partially correct or simplified answers. Ensure the synthesis question has 2 thoughtful sentences (used for extra credit or tiebreakers).
FOUNDER HUNTERS TEACHER GUIDE • PAGE 2 OF 2 CONFIDENTIAL ANSWER KEY ONLY
