Forbes has an excellent article titled Starting Over: How FreshBooks Reinvented Its Online Accounting Service On The Fly. FreshBooks is a popular online accounting app (think major competitor to QuickBooks and Xero, but more focused on micro and small businesses) that’s been around for over 15 years. After 10+ years with the original application, it was clear that the product architecture and user experience wasn’t going to scale for the next 10 years.
We all know that the a full product rewrite is the kiss of death. What to do?
FreshBooks created a separate company, with a separate team, in a separate office, to build a new competitor called BillSpring. BillSpring’s goal was to build a real business with it’s own customer base, that if successful, would replace the original FreshBooks product. After two years, BillSpring was working well and customers loved it. FreshBooks made the BillSpring product the new FreshBooks product while maintaining the legacy product and not forcing customers to switch. Now, FreshBooks has a platform for the future.
Need to reinvent your company? Consider building a competing company, internally.
What else? What are some more thoughts on building a competing company to reinvent the business?
David Cummings on Startups 
I love a little competition, but I think this particulr approach can lend itself to a cannibalistic trend where fear is the primary motivator. I think, in this use case, what the ownership effectively did was facilitate innovation while hedging their bets; they couldn’t lose in this scenario. Fantastic case study and thank you for sharing.
Really interesting. How did the people dynamics work out? Feels like a minefield if and when those two teams merged.