
Ask HN: What do you do when you find out it's already been done? - shinryuu
So you&#x27;ve got an idea for a side project or something that you&#x27;d like to start. When you inevitable find out that it&#x27;s already been done. Do you quit? Do you continue. How do you feel?<p>I usually feel discouraged. Should I? Should you stick with it, and try to put your mark on it.
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mindcrime
Just do it better.

Edit: actually, that's a little too glib. Let me say this instead "just do it
different". And that's actually _not_ a glib answer, because I mean something
very specific by that. In almost every market, there are always _multiple_
vectors along which you can differentiate your offering. To grossly over-
simplify, you could optimize on "price", "quality", "customer intimacy", etc.

For example: if there's a company out there offering something like your
thing, but offering it very cheap, then don't try to be the "low bid" vendor.
Instead, become the "boutique" or "luxury" vendor that sells to customers who
want white-glove service and are willing to pay for it. OR, do the opposite...
if your erstwhile competitor has what appears to be very high prices, see if
you can build your thing in such a way that you can sell it much more cheaply.
Note that in either of these cases, your not _necessarily_ competing for the
same set of customers! There may be some overlap, but there are always
customer who want "the cheapest", or customers who want "the best", or
customers who want the whole "white glove treatment" thing, etc.

Also, as an aside, be wary of trying to compete for "lowest price" as this can
lead to a "race to the bottom" situation and make it very hard to maintain any
kind of margin. If you want to lower prices, do it by finding a way to operate
more efficiently, instead of just sacrificing margin, if at all possible.

There are a few variations on this theme, and you could argue there are a
_lot_ of variations depending on how fine-grained you get in terms of how you
segment those "vectors of differentiation". To learn more about this overall
concept, I highly recommend reading _The Discipline of Market Leaders_ by by
Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema.

~~~
shinryuu
Thank you for this! I'll definitely take a look at the book you recommended.
The product in question is B2C, and I'm thinking that perhaps it might be
possible to offer as a B2B instead. I'm going to email a couple of businesses
and see if I get any positive response.

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troydavis
I think that depends why you didn’t know about the existing solution when you
started. Is it because the existing solution has a major flaw or gap (mediocre
product, no awareness among its market/users, under or over capitalized,
solves a related problem but not yours, etc.) or is it simply because you
didn’t know anything about the field?

If it’s the former, the problem hasn’t been solved. Keep going.

If it’s the latter (and as a customer, you’d have used the existing solution
if you’d known about it when you started), reconsider.

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jascii
If someone else is already successfully doing it, means there clearly is a
need/market for what you plan on doing. Now talk to some of their customers
and figure out how you can do it better!

