In 2006, MySpace was the most visited website in the US - bigger than Google, valued at $12 billion, home to extreme custom profiles, autoplaying music, and bands like Arctic Monkeys who built careers there before ever signing a label. Then News Corp bought it, chased ad revenue, product development slowed and Facebook steadily overtook it. By 2011, it was sold just for $35 million.
So, here is your challenge:
Bring MySpace back for 2026, without losing what made it MySpace.
MySpace’s identity was radical self-expression and a direct line between musicians and fans - a niche nobody really owns today (Instagram is curated, TikTok is algorithm-first, nobody lets you customize a profile with your own code anymore). Your solution needs to answer:
- Niche: who’s this for, and why would they pick it over Instagram, TikTok, Discord or others?
- Identity: how are you retaining the identity of the original app?
- Money: how does it make money without repeating the same mistakes?
Deliverable
- A 5-minute pitch covering the niche, the product concept, the business model, and go-to-market.
- Slides for the pitch sent to huba.nagy@lahties.com by 13:00 on the 16th of September, 2026
Judged on
| Criteria | What we’re looking for |
|---|---|
| Market feasibility | A real, sizeable audience |
| Identity fit | Feels like revived MySpace, not a generic social app |
| Innovation | A genuinely fresh idea, not “MySpace but with AI” |
| Technical realism | Could actually be built and scaled |
| Business model | Sustainable without breaking the user experience |
| Pitch clarity | Easy to follow, confident, well-reasoned |