
Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists? - strimp099
Big market, check. Validated demand, check. Product or service exists, uh-oh.<p>I set out to build a reverse address book. Instead of updating your address book with changes from everyone else, you update your own details and it pushes to everyone else. Turns out someone beat me to it and my inspiration evaporated.<p>Zoom is a recent and great example of competing in a crowded market and winning. For you builders&#x2F;founders out there, are you on a never ending quest to find something new&#x2F;unique or do you prefer another quality in your idea to start a project?
======
alexobenauer
Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question
(it's a common one!):

You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info,
and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last
two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach
that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that
excitement and ideation.

First (as already mentioned), existing solutions prove your idea — their
existence proves that you’re trying to solve a real problem that people might
pay to have solved. And it proves that you’re heading in a direction that
makes sense to others, too.

Second, and this is the biggie: The moment you see someone else’s solution,
you mar and limit your ideas. It suddenly becomes a lot more difficult to
think outside the box because before, you were exploring totally new
territory. Your mind was pioneering in a frontier that had no paths. But now,
you’ve seen someone else’s path. It becomes much harder to see any other
potential paths. It becomes much harder to be freely creative.

Next time you come up with that great idea, don’t Google it for a week. Let
your mind fester on the idea, allow it to grow like many branches from a
trunk. Jot down all of the tangentially related but equally exciting ideas
that inevitably follow. Allow your mind to take the idea far into new places.
No, you won’t build 90% of them, but give yourself the time to enjoy exploring
the idea totally.

When I do this, once I do Google for existing solutions, I usually find that
all the other things I came up with in the ensuing week are far better than
what’s already out there. I have more innovative ideas for where it could go
next; I have a unique value proposition that the other folks haven’t figured
out yet. But had I searched for them first, I never would have come up with
those better ideas at all.

Finally, I’ll say this: if you see your idea has already been done and you no
longer care about it, then it probably wasn’t something you were passionate
enough about in the first place; it was just a neat idea to you.

~~~
rburhum
Great advice, so I am not going to repeat this because I 100% agree with it.

However additionally I would add that if you think that it is the software
alone that will make or break the company, then it is obvious that this is
your first time doing this and that you have never brought a product to
market. There are a ton of examples where one product that was of less quality
absolutely annihilated another excellent product where the difference was the
rest of the "business" machinery (marketing, sales, support, operations, etc).

It is an unpopular opinion in HNs, but good software is not enough to win.

~~~
nicoburns
> good software is not enough to win.

But presumably if you combine it with the other stuff then it helps?

~~~
Jorge1o1
Depends. If your software is _really_ good, you are probably paying your
developers a lot. Someone else can copy your idea for a fraction of the price,
while using outsourced developers from East Europe or India

~~~
rburhum
Don't you think that saying that all software that comes from these places is
plain old racist? Some of the best engineers I have worked with are from
Ukraine, for example.

------
nexuist
A while ago, I was in the same boat. Why try to recreate GitHub, or Uber, or
Salesforce, or Facebook? And once I discovered any competitors in my idea's
field, I would chalk it down to "not worth trying" and call it a day.

But then I realized, if my town can have 3-4 Chinese restaurants with the same
exact menus (probably supplied by the same exact distributors), and they've
all operated continuously for over a decade....who cares about uniqueness?
Sure, none of these copycat places are raking in millions, but it's enough to
support the livelihoods of the owner and all of his/her employees, so who
cares? Your business doesn't need to be a unicorn to make you happy, as long
as you're happy with that outcome.

Of course, tech does not operate the same way as Chinese restaurants, and for
that I point you to Accumulative Advantage:

>Accumulative Advantage is when a small advantage at the beginning of
something, such as kindergarten, becomes a little difference that leads to an
opportunity that makes a bigger difference a bit bigger, and that edge in
turns leads to another opportunity, which makes that initial small difference
even bigger.

Put in context: You don't have to follow the same path your competitors did.
Uber/Lyft poured billions into normalizing the concept of being driven by some
stranger who uses the same app as you, so any new ride-sharing platform can
spend that money in other areas. Giants like Microsoft have decades of
technical debt they need to tackle; you can start building with 2019
libraries, 2019 paradigms (wouldn't the cloud have been great for startups ten
years ago?) and 2019 performance.

In order for the underdog to win, there first _has_ to be an underdog. If
you're brave enough to start, you may just be brave enough to win.

[1]
[https://educationinnovation.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/12/is...](https://educationinnovation.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/12/is-
your-birthday-an-advantage-in-school-malcolm-gladwell-thinks-it-is.html)
(yeah, weird source, but I'm just trying to define the phrase)

~~~
sheetjs
Also worth noting the downside of scale: some opportunities are "too small"
for a Microsoft or Google to pursue. Google revenue for 2018 was $136.8B.
Extra effort to possibly address a small niche segment of a market, that would
improve revenue by $1M per year, is too small to draw anyone's attention.

However, that same $1M/yr is enough to sustain a bootstrapped business and
even possibly build the credibility to raise a larger round and try to win the
space.

If a company is already solving a problem, a better question to ask is "why
didn't I know they exist?" It may be that they aren't properly tailoring their
marketing to the target audience, in which case you have a clear opening.

As a "personal anecdote", we ([https://sheetjs.com/](https://sheetjs.com/))
offer a variety of solutions for problems involving structured data. Before we
started, there were plenty of solutions but every solution had various
compatibility issues or didn't work with our data. Even in 2019 companies turn
to us because of compatibility issues with Google Sheets or Excel 2019. We
went through the same analysis and concluded that neither company thinks there
will be a meaningful improvement in revenue or marketshare

~~~
pkghost
> $1M per year, is too small to draw anyone's attention.

I'll take this opportunity to tell a long-winded story about how that number
can be two orders of magnitude larger, and still be too small.

I was with Slide when Google bought us in 2010. They bungled the acquisition
(bought us to work on Google+, which had already made a bunch of disagreeable
decisions by the time we were ready to rumble), so we were left to our own
devices for a year, in which time about 12 of us made something called
Photovine, a photo sharing app that would have competed with Instagram, and we
were getting pretty universally positive press. I think TechCrunch called it
the best mobile app google had ever produced, and all of our beta and early
release engagement numbers were bananas.

(We also had loads of fun with it — the core sharing mechanic was organized
around shared captions that we called vines, and we spent most of our play-
testing time swapping visual puns.)

Anyway, if you project our trajectory generously, which didn't seem out of the
question given our early traction, we would have wound up competing with
Insta, doing business in the hundreds of millions. But Larry, in all his "more
wood behind fewer arrows" wisdom, decided to axe the project, as he did many,
many others, and re-assign all of us to YouTube, which, granted, was gearing
up to compete with TV, and needed more staff.

~~~
anchpop
I remember looking at photovine when it came out. I was only 11 but I thought
it was a brilliant idea. And it was so much more colorful than any other
Google apps I'd used at the time.

------
semireg
I’ve had this feeling since I used my first Zebra label printer back in ...
2003? It wasn’t until 2012 I was working on the backend programming of Zebra
printers that I realized Macs had very little support for designing and
printing labels. I created a one off (as in still at version 1.0) native Mac
app that used a transparent window and printed whatever was behind it. It is
called LabelScope.

Fast forward 6 years and I come to this realization that the label printer
software landscape hasn’t changed much at all. I start poking around
Electron/React and native node modules for USB, fonts, barcodes and ... a year
later this app is born: [http://label.live](http://label.live)

The problem is, it’s really difficult to market. 95% of my users come from
organic App Store search...

My competition is either the free software that comes with the printer or very
complicated and expensive Windows software.

Yep, it already exists... but no one seems to be doing the “any desktop
computer, any label printer” solution.

It’s been a fun ride so far.

~~~
kkarakk
you should write a paid react native/flutter/xamarin library. corporate apps
use label libraries a lot and they usually suck coz provided by manufacturers.
lots of man hours could be saved

------
karterk
It depends on the size of the total addressable market. If the size of your
target market is big, even if there are bigger established players, there is
always a chance for a small, nimble product to carve out a niche. Established
players often head upmarket (especially if they are VC funded). This often
gives an opening for a new entrant to capture some of the SMB market share.

An example closer to me: the search engine market is dominated by
Elasticsearch, which is open source, extremely popular and is now even a
public company. However, I decided to work on a small project called Typesense
([https://github.com/typesense/typesense](https://github.com/typesense/typesense))
to try and carve out a niche (and perhaps charge for it later).

I decided to take a dive simply because of the size of the market -- search is
required in almost every SaaS application, and there are plenty of downsides
to ES that can be addressed with a nimble, alternative search engine. And
that's what I am doing :)

~~~
blacksoil
I'm one of the people who'd definitely use an alternative to ElasticSearch! I
hate the fact that elastic search is using Java. It just takes up too much
memory.

~~~
avichalp
There are few Rust based projects now for Full Text Search. So you can move
away from JVM.

\-
[https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic](https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic)

\- [https://github.com/toshi-search/Toshi](https://github.com/toshi-
search/Toshi)

------
bluedino
If you are put off, it's a good sign you shouldn't even try to build it. If
you're discouraged that easily, you aren't going to have the desire or drive
to stick with it.

Let's go back in time 20-25 years. I was a wannabe game programmer, and every
few months I'd get a stick up my ass to write a Doom clone, RTS, or whatever
game I was playing at the time. I'd recruit a buddy or two from a chat room or
messageboard. Even though whatever game was out there (Quake II, AoE) was
amazing and something we'd never come close to, we'd start methodically
planning out the game, star writing an engine, have some test art
created...you couldn't stop us. At least not at the start. Eventually we'd get
distracted and go our seperate ways, but we still worked on the project like
it was the most important thing in our lives for 2-3 months.

Back to today. I wanted to make a chess website, just something simple where
you could login and play a game with other users. Mostly so my dad and I could
play without being in the same room. I wrote a simple web-based chess engine,
got about 75% of the way to what I would consider a 'completed' project. Then
I went to chess.com.

Now, I wasn't planning on making something even close to that. No chat rooms,
blogs, rankings...but seeing all the features on the site just sucked every
last drop of motiviation I had. It didn't help that my current site was
basically playable and didn't need much more work. But from that point one,
every time I opened my project it just felt so futile.

I know that products evolve over time, and whatever Chess.com looked like in
it's first revision probably wasn't anything special. But it's like I knew
that I would never even want to take it to that level, so I just lost every
drop of motiviation I had at that point.

------
Lowkeyloki
I'm a chronic wheel reinventor. If you're trying to make money off of your
project, your mileage may vary. However, I've found that there are plenty of
good reasons to reinvent the wheel. Although I'd very rarely reinvent the
wheel when I'm doing something for pay as that implies issues like deadlines
and maintainability, I do it all the time for personal projects.

Professionally, I'll write only the code that I feel comfortable that I
understand and can maintain. Otherwise, I'll look to third party open source
code. Unfortunately, I have been bitten a few times recently by popular and
well-maintained but poorly designed or tested libraries that include
frustrating bugs.

In my personal projects, I like to challenge myself. I will choose to write
any and all code that isn't provided by the language's standard library even
if trustworthy open source libraries exist that I would use in a professional
situation. I like to think of it as "desert island programming". If nothing
else, it has taught me interesting things about all sorts of domains I
wouldn't have otherwise sought to learn about. And that knowledge is worth the
struggle when making it to market as fast as possible isn't the goal.

There are other reasons for reinventing the wheel besides supplementing your
personal understanding. Sometimes the licenses of the alternatives are
inadequate. Of course, that's a somewhat personal assessment. Sometimes the
alternatives are poorly maintained, poorly designed, or have fundamental flaws
or bugs. Sometimes it's not that the existing software is bad per se.
Oftentimes writing software involves trade-offs and perhaps the trade-offs the
major library's authors have chosen are different from what you might choose.
Recreating it yourself can clue you in to these trade-offs and gives you the
opportunity to explore different paths.

------
woutr_be
Mine is mostly a mental problem, I feel like my product will never be good
enough compared to others. Even right now, I'm working on a simple website for
a specific niche, but there's already another website that does exactly the
same thing. I feel like people will just think I copied there idea, or that
they might have better content than me. It's always been an issue for me, and
because of it, I've never been able to finish anything.

~~~
bonestamp2
> there's already another website that does exactly the same thing

I don't think there's anything wrong with this per se, but you still need
something to set yours apart. For example, if the features are identical, then
the price can be different. If the price is the same, then you can edge them
out with features or service or get ready, experience.

Amazon won us over with price, but now there are often other places with lower
online prices (often walmart.com) but we tend to use amazon more because the
experience is good (although they're killing that now too, but that's another
discussion).

~~~
SyneRyder
_> For example, if the features are identical, then the price can be
different._

Just a reminder that pricing "cheaper" isn't always a good idea. Newbies often
think they'll charge less, but without having the data competitors have of how
long the product takes to develop & maintain, how much support is involved,
how much advertising costs to acquire a customer, how often you need to
upgrade your equipment etc.

Please make sure that your competitive advantage is not "selling at a price
you can't possibly make a living from".

(Hint: being found first can also be an advantage. Even if you're not better
or cheaper than the competition, if they try you first and think "meh, good
enough, I can afford that", that can still get you the sale. Not everyone
exhaustively researches the competing products.)

~~~
AstralStorm
Can't beat "free" on price which is why Google is so terrible to compete
against.

~~~
SyneRyder
Sometimes you can beat free! You can outlive the free / freeware competitors,
because they're often not making money!

Remember Google often kills off their services. They bought Picasa & the Nik
Photography Collection & made them both available for free... now Picasa is
gone (even though there's a ton of customers who still want it), and Google
sold the Nik Collection to DxO and it's back to costing $70 again. And
Fastmail exists even though Gmail is free.

Google is not known for providing friendly personal customer service... so why
not aim to get your customers saying "yeah XYZ costs more, but oh my god, they
have the friendliest & most hilarious people answering their emails, and they
actually fixed my problem!" You can only do that if you've got money coming in
to pay for the support team (you want to pay your employees well too, right?)
Derek Sivers has some great ideas on doing awesome customer service:

[https://sivers.org/cs](https://sivers.org/cs)

(Anyway, just some food for thought. Sometimes pricing cheap is absolutely the
right thing, sometimes Charge More is the right thing. Experiment with both!)

~~~
AstralStorm
I said on price. Beating service on stability and support is not competing on
price - that is very much possible. You can compete with Google on both of you
aim at their enterprise package or cloud offering.

------
mceachen
I voluntarily entered one of the most saturated markets that I'm aware of.
It's literally a cliché to "do a photo startup."

That rumbling dark cloud of well-funded, well-established competitors on the
horizon, and (perhaps my mistaken) belief that I see gaps of sunshine where I
can succeed, is one reason I get out of bed every morning and persevere.

That, and my wife needs the product.
[https://blog.photostructure.com/introducing-
photostructure/](https://blog.photostructure.com/introducing-photostructure/)

(forgive the Always Be Selling, please!)

It was common sentiment when I went through YC that many excellent ideas would
be dismissed by investors due to perceived existing competition or absence of
market. Only rapid execution, iteration, and customer feedback can actually
determine if the idea has legs and can find product market fit.

~~~
dusted
That looks interesting, and what sets it apart from other solutions that I
know of, is that would allow me to host it myself, so instead of handing over
my precious pixels to some company.

------
adrianbooth17
There are two reasons for building something: 1\. Money 2\. Fun / Learning

Both have good reason for building something even though a similar product
might exist. Mark Zuckerberg didn't look at MySpace and say "Oh well, there's
already a social network where people can connect with each other. I'll stay
in Harvard". He saw MySpace and said "I can do better".

For the learning side, it's useful to build something despite its existence
for gaining a greater appreciation for how that tool works. There's a service
I've used before called Cloud66, which is essentially a wrapper for cloud
services like AWS. I liked it so much I decided to build a clone just to see
how it all works under the hood, and after replicating it I realised the
underlying technologies used to achieve this are pretty simple. There's always
good outcomes from building something, whether that be money, learning or just
the joy of building something from nothing

------
lioeters
There's a large company (30000~ employees, market cap "north of $3 billion")
called Rocket Internet [0], based mostly (solely?) on the business strategy of
building something that already exists.

Seeing how successful they are, it seems the "uniqueness of a product/service
idea" is not such an important factor as it's commonly considered. Perhaps
it's more about the execution, how the idea is implemented - UX, marketing,
etc.

[0] [https://thehustle.co/rocket-internet-oliver-
samwer](https://thehustle.co/rocket-internet-oliver-samwer)

~~~
Etheryte
Worth mentioning that they only work in a very specific niche — e-commerce
sites. That's literally the only thing they do, although admittedly very well.

------
_Understated_
Any time I am talking to younger entrepreneurs about ideas they have that
already exist in some fashion I give them a simple analogy to ponder over:
Rice!

I tell them to take a look at the rice isle in the supermarket and ask
themselves "why are there so many varieties of rice?"... it's rice for
goodness sake! How can one be different to another?

How can there possibly be a need for hundreds of different types of rice.

Even if you just pick one type, like white rice, there are multiple brands
competing with something as simple as rice.

Every item on a supermarket shelf has earned the right to be there because
people are buying it for different reasons.

Everyone is different: Some people only buy Uncle Ben's rice at 4 times the
price of the supermarket rice and others only touch the unbranded value rice.

It's all marketing.

So if your idea already exists then it means there is probably a demand and
you just need to find your angle and market it appropriately.

------
digitalni
I have a history of taking on giants head on. Even I thought on so many
occasions that what I was doing is insane and will never work, lo and behold,
it did.

Currently I am building a simplified windows deployment system (fdeploy.com)
which already exists but is no longer available freely. I want to change that.

My advice is: yes, do it. Give it a try, with most essential features and do
not get lost in the details.

Deliver something and see if people want it. Anything. The sooner the better.

------
rdm_blackhole
I am in the same boat, I started a side project a few months ago and released
the MVP without looking too much into the competition. But it turns out there
is a lot of it.

The reason I am not going to stop working on it is:

\- I am learning a lot while developing the new features(using lots of
different tech that I don't necessarily use in my day job)

\- it allows me to channel some creativity that I did not know I had

\- it doesn't cost me anything to run

\- even if it fails I can always use it as a showcase of my skills if I decide
to start job hunting.

At the moment my goal is to get 10 users. When I get there, I'll re-evaluate
how far I want to take it with this thing.

~~~
wolco
There are advantages because you can see what features work or not before you
build them into your product.

~~~
rdm_blackhole
Yes, I have actually been copying/improving existing features from the
competitors while trying to improve some of the things that I consider "bad
user experience"

------
dsalzman
This reminds me of an old blog of mine.

"The culture of Googling everything is diminishing innovation and critical
thinking."

Person A: "I have this great Idea!" Person B: "What is it?" Person A: "Well
its ______ for ______!. Isn't that awesome" Person B: (Quickly googles on his
phone) "There are already X companies doing exactly that" Person A:
"Ohhh..."(Drops his head in shame and moves on"

The most innovative ideas were mostly created by multiple people independently
and not knowingly.

Do the lowered barriers to knowledge reduce our ability for critical thinking?
How can we maximize the inherent benefits of the web; while minimizing these
negative 2nd order effects?

[https://dannysalzman.com/second-order-google-
effect/](https://dannysalzman.com/second-order-google-effect/)

~~~
humblebee
I use to work with a friend from high school on a lot of side projects. He was
entrepreneur, and I was just a hacker. I'd generally share all my random ideas
with him because I just wanted to talk through the idea with someone and he
was generally the only person who would be interested at all in any of my
ideas. However, he commonly would come back with a google search and saying
"It's that just X". He was very focused on how can an idea be monetized, and
all I cared about was how I could build it / how it works.

The flip side of that is as soon as I figured something out I moved on, which
lead to many half baked projects that I never got to completion. Once I
figured out how something worked or how to solve a problem I lost interest in
the idea almost completely and moved onto the next thing.

I still haven't completely figured out how to frame thing in a way to avoid
this. The best way I know how to do it is to over shoot the idea most of the
time. The issue is this doesn't work very well when working within a team.

~~~
dsalzman
I don't think you have a problem at all. You just need a partner who enjoys
the money making side as much as you love to create and work together.

------
WheelsAtLarge
I used to think that once a product was created it made no sense to try to
produce another one. It's not a valid reason not to try. If you can make the
product better or have a way to monetize it then it's a good idea to try.

The hardest way to succeed it to create a brand new product no one has seen
since you have to not only find the market you are selling to but convince
them that they need the product plus teach that market how to use the product.
Something that's expensive and time-consuming. So in a way having a product in
the market is an advantage to someone that wants to compete in that area.

------
ankit219
My $0.02.

If you feel like the problem exists, start building. But, if you think the
problem is solved, then it makes no sense to proceed with it.

For a startup, people use your product because they have a problem to solve.
It does not matter how bad your UI/UX is, how drastically bad your flows are,
if you are offering a solution no one else is, you will have users. It just
needs to work. The more pertinent the problem, more the users will be annoyed
if it does not work. Ideally, your idea should be one of the solutions to the
problem, and the entire initial phase is there to establish two things: 1/
Whether your solution works? Can you find a unique solution for the problem?
2/ Do a lot of people really have that problem?

For example: If you want to get into ridesharing and taxi market today, it
will be difficult. But there is an open case where the wait times and
variability annoys a lot of people. That is, if I am taking an Uber, I dont
know how long will I need to wait. The app says 5 mins, but can be anywhere
between 5-15 depending on the match. Sometimes, I have waited for >10 min and
the driver cancelled and had to wait another 15. If some app can tell me exact
time - or even let me schedule a ride - I would be happy to pay extra for that
given it saves me the time and frustration. Not sure how many will have the
problem, or it is good enough for others, but I will prefer a cab which allows
me exactly this - even at a higher price point.

~~~
bo1024
I really like this perspective!

Maybe Zoom is a good example. For remote meetings, I was using Skype, Google
Hangouts, and other video chat software. I kept having problems (especially on
Linux). Products existed, but the problem wasn't solved. For me, Zoom solved
the problem.

~~~
Ologn
The same for me. Zoom works well for me on Ubuntu Linux. IIRC, Google Hangouts
works as well. Skype for Business I have had problems with.

I have primarily used Linux for 25 years. In recent years the only other
program I had trouble with was that the Unity IDE would run on Ubuntu, but to
compile and export a VR scene, I needed to use a Mac.

Noting the OP - I created a thesaurus site a few years ago -
[https://www.matchingwords.com](https://www.matchingwords.com) . I tried to
pay for Google Ads for it, but they said the site was "not unique enough" and
refused my money. Well there was an aspect of the site that was somewhat
unique, although not completely unique - I had integrated hunspell into the
site, so not only would a word like "laugh" yield a result, so would "laughs"
and "laughed". That still was not enough for them though.

Tangentially, the thesaurus backend work was something another project had
needed and was done before the web site was put up. With that backend work
done, I thought it would be easy to just put up a website so that the backend
work could be used twice, so I put up the website.

------
_Nat_
I've long been baffled as to why what I'm building doesn't already exist. Sure
it's tough to actually design-and-make, but it's basically a holy grail of
computing that a ton of people have, I think, generally wanted since long
before I was born.

The weird thing is that I often do find people working on similar things.
Sometimes they're historical projects I'll find a Wikipedia article on, or
sometimes they're posted here on HackerNews.

Every time I see one, I think, "Wow! That's a lot like what I'm doing! How is
this not a bigger thing?!". The initial surprise used to last a while as I
started to dig, but further explanation tended to reveal that things weren't
as they appeared.

For an analogy, say that everyone's still using horse-drawn carriages, not
cars, to get around. Then, you want to invent a car. Then, you see what looks
a lot like a car in someone's lab or in a museum. Then it's like, woah!,
right? I mean, if someone already made a car, why are people still using
horse-drawn carriages?

So then I'd look into the car and see that it doesn't actually have an engine
inside. Or maybe it's got like a major piece of an engine, but still 80%
missing.

Anyway, back to the thread's topic...

If you're building something that already exists, how sure are you that the
thing that you think is a preexisting implementation actually does what you
want your thing to do?

And maybe it does, and maybe your thing's a replication effort. But, my
experience has been that things that look the same are off. That I'd see
something that I'd think to be a car, and then mistakenly assume that surely
it must contain an engine, only to later find out it doesn't.

~~~
halter73
> I'm building an "intentional system". The idea's that you just tell the
> computer what to do, and it does it the best way possible. This includes
> figuring out what you told it to do, how to do that, how to optimize it,
> etc., in a provably optimal way.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to achieve, but to me, this
sounds prohibitively difficult for even the largest most sophisticated
organizations at this point in history. It's just way too general. Like
general AI kind of general.

~~~
dusted
Didn't IBM do a programming language like that once? They found out, that most
times, people don't actually know what they want, or how to explain it in a
way that only have one or two perfectly valid interpretations.

~~~
guiriduro
SQL? That's an interesting case. It sits at the nexus of a well-defined
relational theory, Codd et al., and normalised table data, and you can only
ask it things which make sense like selection, projection and various joins.
To the question of intentionality, it is declarative and does hide a lot of
the work of arriving at the requested result.

Perhaps when viewed in the context of a more tightly defined problem set and
solution space, and allowing for the advances in algorithms, AI and computing
power since the 1970's - DNNs, evolutionary algos, backpropagation, annealing
etc. -intentional goal-seeking self-programming should at least be
conceivable.

~~~
AstralStorm
Having a grab bag of algorithms did not make an idea. I suspect the author
thought more of responding to user's intentions not software doing whatever it
wills.

This being a multitude of hard AI unsolved problems layered one on another.
Such as building a fitness function or goal based on natural language input
combined with context and refinement.

I know if two semi successful very limited attempts, one being Google DeepMind
AutoML, the other being Bayou. They're really not too useful in practice
anymore. (State of the art surpassed anything they are capable of.)

------
cambaceres
I've been working on a project for the last 6 months, and this week the
company will be founded. When I came up with the idea I barely googled it, I
just assumed that if it existed I would know about it. A few weeks ago
however, I found out that a version of the system I'm building exists already.

After the initial negative response I started to carefully examine my
competitor's solution, and the more I look at it, the more I'm convinsed that
our system will outperform it big time. They apparently have technical
problems which has stopped them from capturing market shares in the past 6
months.

If I would have found out about this other company 6 months ago, I would have
never started working on the project. Thank god I did though. I have learned
so much about web and app development, I have expanded the idea of what I'm
capable of, I'm about to found a company (which of course anyone can do but
feels super exiting for me :D ) and I actually have a shot at making it fly.

It is always better to do something than nothing.

------
manav
Just because something exists, doesn't mean it can't be done better, faster,
smarter, cheaper. In fact it's usually a good sign that someone else built it
first because it may indicate a valid market.

~~~
wolco
Exactly this, the market is validated. Can you find an opening? The game
changes more to marketing.

~~~
0n34n7
And to a certain extent: cost.

------
shishy
Competition is the fun part! Once you see existing products/services, you can
use them as a proxy to validate some aspects of your idea, but also study from
them to see what they're lacking:

\- Perhaps the service isn't able to meet 100% of the user needs, maybe
because some users jumped onto that product because it was the closest (but
not perfect) solution to their problem. Or maybe the company grew too big and
lost focus/decided to ignore the needs of a few because they moved up.

\- What about the non-technical parts of the product/service? Sometimes you
can differentiate by user experience (the note-taking app "Notion" is a really
good example of this, and totally swept me up. Kudos to their team!).

------
dennisgorelik
At the end of 2006 I decided to build a job search aggregator. After 2 months
of developing a prototype I found out that indeed.com and simplyhired.com
already implemented job aggregators for ~2 years.

So, instead of continuing with job aggregator - I decided to build a job board
(postjobfree.com)

My job board grew OK, because indeed.com and simplyhired.com sent us organic
(free) traffic for couple of years.

But then (~2009) Indeed and Simplyhired started to charge job boards money for
the traffic, and then refused to send even paid traffic to job boards (~2012).

In addition to that, Japanese "Recruit" holding bought Indeed in 2012 (for
$1.2B).

Then "Recruit" bought Simplyhired (2016).

Then "Recruit" bought Glassdoor in 2018 (for another $1.2B). Glassdoor worked
as a job aggregator as well.

So now largest job aggregator companies convert from "job aggregator" model to
"job board" model where customers are direct employers and not other job
boards.

So few years ago I started to transform my job board business into job
aggregator again. I think if I never abandoned job aggregator idea in the
first place, my business, probably, would be a little bit more successful by
now. However it is hard to tell for sure. I could have given up competing
against Indeed and SimplyHired back in 2007-2012.

~~~
vpatryshev
An impressive story. As I understand it, you did it more or less
singlehandedly.

~~~
dennisgorelik
As a single founder - yes, but not singlehandedly.

I always used help from employees. Initially part-time, then full-time, then
more than one employee/contractor.

------
pbiggar
When we started CircleCI, there were at least 3 other things that were pretty
much the same. In addition, two similar services had died, and one had pivoted
to be a PaaS. There was also Jenkins, TeamCity, Bamboo, and lots of other
alternatives. And then over the next two years, there was at least 20
competitors that started, some with significant funding.

I agonized over so many competitors, and none of them mattered. If you're
going to do it, just do it.

~~~
prabugp
That’s inspiring! Did you get to a point where the joy of creating something
was superseded by the need to keep it alive and winning? How do you balance
both? Often I worry that when a product that I feel so passionate about turns
into a business, then the time I spend running the business (which I might not
like) will be far more than what I’ll spend working on the product. Not sure
if it will be as much fun.

Also is it still the same thing that you envisioned when you first stared?

~~~
pbiggar
I was always looking to make a business, though I really enjoy the creation
and product side of things. It turned into a business pretty quick, though: we
had customers within 3 months and paying customers within 6. 18 months later
we had $1m ARR.

I enjoyed running the business up until about 15 employees. When it turned to
25 people I asked someone else to take over as CEO, which was a pretty good
decision in hindsight. Circle is now 200 people, and the activities that the
CEO does are not ones I would enjoy.

I'm the CTO of [https://darklang.com](https://darklang.com) now, and honestly
I much prefer being CTO than CEO, especially now that I appreciate how hard
being CEO is, and given that I'm working with a great CEO.

------
brentadamson
I've been building Jive Search. There's already tons of competitors in search
(Google, Bing, etc.). There's also DuckDuckGo, StartPage, etc. that claim to
be privacy-focused but are just as opaque as Google. The niche I'm targeting
is users that understand that for true privacy in search you have to be
transparent and open source so that users can view the code and run it on
their own if they want.

------
biztos
I had, or I guess still have, an idea for Yet Another Web Framework. I've
written four versions of it in three languages already. I kept running into a
problem: if it was complex enough to realize my full vision, then I wouldn't
have time to maintain it, _especially_ if it got any traction at all. Plus,
for each single thing I wanted it to do, there were pretty well established
things you could use instead.

I enjoyed programming it as a learning experience and to scratch my own itch.
But I eventually decided it would actually be harder to maintain the system
than to write a dumb little web app for any given project. And that there were
probably much more valuable things I could teach myself than My Excentric Web
Framework.

On another front, while I have never written any code for it, I keep thinking
it would be cool to have GeoCities back but updated for all the cool stupid
things you can do in the modern Web. A place for your weird taste in CSS, in
public, with no shame and open to all. But I keep wishing somebody else would
do it, which is not exactly the thing you asked about but somewhat close.

~~~
rlopezcc
> GeoCities back but updated for all the cool stupid things you can do in the
> modern Web. A place for your weird taste in CSS, in public

Sounds like Neocities

~~~
biztos
Oh yeah, I had forgotten about NeoCities, though I did know about them at some
point! Thanks for the tip.

------
guybedo
It's pretty hard nowadays to come up with a brilliant unique idea that has
never been implemented before. I'm not even sure it's possible at all.
Competition means there's a market and customers willing to pay for a product.
This is a validation of your idea.

Now, unless you're shooting for the unicorn status, there's a pretty good
chance you can build a good product, compete and get enough customers to make
a living. You don't have to be the best or the cheapest to compete and you
don't need hundreds of thousands of customers to make a living.

In the end, i think it really depends on what you're trying to achieve:
unicorn status or small side project that you'll enjoy working on and might
someday become a full time job.

Either way you should try to do what you love, or if that's not an option, to
learn to love what you do. That way, even if you don't succeed, your time
won't be wasted and will be spent doing something you love.

------
scrollaway
It depends whether you're building something for the utility of it or to make
money.

You can do the latter in a crowded market as you said, but often if you think
you would like to build something for yourself, which is often the best way to
build a product, then it's certainly possible to be satisfied with something
that already exists.

------
abraae
I was told early in my career that you can't sell something unless you have
competitors. it's not universally true I expect but many potential customers
operate from the mindset that a) if you have no competitors, it's not a real
thing and b) there's no hurry for them to look into it.

------
dschuetz
I gave up trying to invent something unique (because trying too hard tells you
that you are failing), but I constantly contemplate on ideas to make something
that already exists better. There are many things that are already great, but
some weird or restrictive design decisions are making it impossible for me to
accept their 'greatness'. Take the G5 Power Mac, for instance. At the time it
really was one of the greatest products Apple ever conceived. But then came
some weird design decisions, partly due to IBM's inability to provide more
efficient chip designs and it all went to hell. Coolant leakage, overheating,
insane power consumption. Since then I've been trying to come up with ideas to
make the Power Mac design a thing again, but with another system inside.

------
reilly3000
I think your idea is fantastic. That doesn’t exist for me today; even if there
is another solution out there, it hasn’t come to my attention, consideration,
or adoption.

I think the idea of a reverse address book could be generalized across many
contexts. Tim Bernes-Lee is laying tracks for a protocol with that in mind,
but it needs apps, especially ones that reach into where people store data
today and migrate it to a network where people can subscribe to others data
and publish their own.

Meet me where I’m at: on an iPhone, with its contacts system and cloud. Give
me shared data without making me relearn contact management over again. Make
it so I can show my mom how to do it in a minute, or better yet so easy she
doesn’t need to ask about it. Don’t wait for big tech to deliver this. Prove
it’s possible.

~~~
rohan1024
Can you share more information about the protocol Tim is developing? Any Link?

The idea sounds promising.

~~~
reilly3000
[https://solid.inrupt.com/](https://solid.inrupt.com/)

------
HelloFellowDevs
I had an idea, that I was going to implement over the month of May as soon as
I finished my internship. I was very excited, I wrote up a pitch and mapped
out the infrastructure. I just hadn't written code yet, I was saving that for
when I could just write code for myself in May. This weekend someone else
launched it. It's not as if I was thinking that my idea was novel, I just
didn't think anyone else would get onto it let alone 'beat' me to market. I
can still work on that idea for sure, but it really took the wind out of my
sails.

Here's Overcast with Clip Sharing[0]

[0] [https://marco.org/2019/04/27/overcast-clip-
sharing](https://marco.org/2019/04/27/overcast-clip-sharing)

------
taherchhabra
I am in the same boat as you are in.I Have so many ideas but not sure which
one to follow. I found steve blank's "The startup owner's manual" very useful
in evaluating ideas. I have created this
excel([https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Cap3CIWHJq3WdAypU6l3...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Cap3CIWHJq3WdAypU6l3y_02e5L0xi8tubMYC5cpS04/edit?usp=sharing))
using the website
[http://www.guidearama.com/guides/fwb.html](http://www.guidearama.com/guides/fwb.html)

------
jtraffic
1\. Your idea is probably not identical. You execution almost certainly won't
be. 2\. There is usually room to compete. 3\. Innovations often take root
slowly and need a network of collaborators and competitors to nurture them.

------
d--b
I think one of the question to ask yourself is: is that competing product the
one I'd have built? Is it a product that would solve the problem I wanted to
solve perfectly? Is that product awesome?

If the answer's yes, you probably should stop. Because at best, you'd make the
same product. If not, see where the product fails and try and estimate what
could be better and is it worth it.

Last, remember that the later you are on the market, the more expensive it
gets to get attention. You'll either need cash or need to seek funding.

------
tluyben2
If there are no competitors I generally worry far more than if it exists. I
have built many things that do not exist and found out why they do not exist;
there is no (sustainable) market (even though we did some research which
showed enough market, but turned out there was not or at least not enough to
reach that market with limited/bootstrapped means). I have also built many
products into (we then thought) saturated markets (dating, free hosting, ...)
which did well for us.

------
badatshipping
I try to ask myself, if I execute this idea really well vs. really badly, what
is the full range of possible outcomes? If the range isn’t that big then the
problem doesn’t really matter. This has saved me from building a lot of cool,
neat stuff that isn’t important.

I think my current idea (a new IDE) has potential to be very important, and I
think I’m going to do 2 or 3 key things better than my competitors, so I just
have to do it :) It doesn’t matter who else is doing it.

------
mrich
The longer you are in the industry, the more you realize that things repeat
and the only thing that matters is getting some market share and growing your
business. This can happen in a number of ways - perhaps a beautiful UI,
network effects, lower costs, or a new technology platform (web) that shakes
up existing markets. So it happens all the time, you just need to find the
right angle to best the incumbents.

------
amelius
This is a funny question because most successful open source software seems to
be a clone of existing software. E.g. gimp/Photoshop, inkscape/Illustrator and
libre office/office. Of course the nice part is that as an OSS developer, you
don't have to think about the requirements and specification and even the UI
of the software because that has already been done.

~~~
klntsky
> This is a funny question because most successful open source software seems
> to be a clone of existing software

This is just wrong. None of the examples you mention are clones.

------
wintercarver
My favorite example of this is jet.com - who in their right mind would compete
directly with Amazon on Amazon’s home turf? Well, it turns out it only looked
like the same turf (“e-commerce”), but that’s the catch. Differentiation is
subtle yet powerful, and Jet.com went for slower, bulk commodities, with a
different pricing approach. Markets are, apparently, full of fickle niches!

------
Kiro
I only build things I actually want to use myself. If I, after research, find
that my idea has already been done it simply means that there's an untapped
market where either their product sucks or they're bad at marketing. Otherwise
I would have already have known about them and I shouldn't need to do research
to find it.

------
godzillabrennus
The saying:

“Pioneers get arrows. Settlers take the land.”

Basically represents that being first to market is not ideal. Out execute when
the market is proven.

~~~
AstralStorm
There is always a new component to success.

Facebook's was a social graph. Google's were big analytics. Uber's a new
terrible business model. Microsoft's was coopting so many good ideas to build
a software ecosystem. Apple was the same with hardware.

And sometimes the space is just free for the taking, given strong enough
budget. That's how DTP and CAD, electronics design and 3D graphics were almost
duopolized. (And by better part libraries.)

Sound and video editing are a bit more competitive, but not a lot.

------
JohnFen
> For you builders/founders out there, are you on a never ending quest to find
> something new/unique or do you prefer another quality in your idea to start
> a project?

I take on projects (both commercial and hobby) that satisfy a need that isn't
already being adequately addressed elsewhere.

I don't care much if a product of the same sort already exists. I only care
that it isn't adequately meeting a need.

In fact, if I've come up with an idea and find that nothing like it already
exists, I consider that a red flag. Not a showstopper, but a reason to be much
more cautious. This is because it often happens that if nobody else is
addressing a given market, it's because there's some serious problem in
addressing that market that I haven't foreseen (perhaps it isn't as big as I
think, or there is some technical gotcha that I didn't notice, etc.)

------
bmaupin
"Being first to do something is unimportant. Being best is what counts."
([https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/13/8202873/first-doesnt-
matt...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/3/13/8202873/first-doesnt-matter))

------
VvR-Ox
Not necessarily.

Overall: Look at all these products that have nearly identical features (with
only some distinction).

The key is to think about the features that would make your product unique and
to analyze whether there is people who will prefer your product (at your price
point) to all the other options.

I'd love to bring something innovative to the market but it really isn't
necessary. A lot of people focus on things that a lot of other people don't
care about or like. So it's easy to get a decent market share with basically
already existing products that just provide some "buy-worthy" features.

Of course competition can be harder here but on the other hand you don't have
to put that much effort into building something completely new (which will
give others the opportunity to improve upon your great idea).

It's also easier to analyze an already existing market.

------
cy6erlion
A musician doesn't stop writing a love song just because there are millions of
love songs already written.

------
te_chris
I think a lot of people are missing the point about what actually makes a
startup work in the early stages: a reliable and affordable route to
customers. If you have this then go for it. If you don’t, then your real first
step is to find this. Without this you won’t be able to compete.

------
aitchnyu
I know a VCS service and a support tool that could let you steal their lunch.
Both are lumbering giants under their current owners and have not innovated
for years. If its lean they could beat you on execution. If its riddled with
bloat and the good engineers have left, you could win.

------
lquist
The heuristic for this is can you make the product 10x better (along a
dimension that matters) for some subset of consumers? The subset can be equal
to the set: Zoom makes video conferencing 10x better on reliability for the
whole market. That said, that case is much rarer. It is often much easier to
deeply understand the needs of a subset of users and make a tailored solution
that delivers a 10x outcome to that set of users. Examples here are CRMs that
specialize on industry verticals vs Salesforce. A pharmaceutical CRM is
functionally very different than a one size fits all CRM. PS Also, stop
looking for big markets. Look for a small market that you can dominate quickly
and logically extend from there. PPS Most ideas here stolen from Thiel

------
apatters
No, except in certain cases.

When the market is large you can almost always carve out a stake. You already
know the demand is there, you can get a share of it by reaching people who
haven't heard of or don't like your competitor, or by doing something a little
different and better. The risk and reward are both lower in these businesses
vs a Valley style moonshot that VCs tend to like.

However if the market is just a few companies or the service depends heavily
on network effects I wouldn't do it. E.g. the investment required to offer as
many apps as Google Play or as many social updates as Facebook is huge, you
can't really bootstrap your way into this, and people are only going to engage
with so many app stores or social networks.

------
sriku
I think it will help if you know why what you're going to build is going to be
better than what exists. Like Google knew its search will be better, like Zoom
knows its conf is better than WebEx.

Apple is the quintessential example of "take a sad song, and make it better".

------
ludwigvan
There is a difference bt. building an app/software and building a business. If
you enter a field with existing businesses, you have to treat it like a
business, otherwise your app will generate zero revenue. Talking unfortunately
from experience.

~~~
jcadam
I feel your pain. I spent a year building a SaaS and then another year trying
to find customers. Never made a single sale.

I realize now I approached the whole enterprise bass-ackwards.

Next time: find customers first, then build the thing. If you can't find
customers, then at least you haven't wasted time and energy building the
thing.

I know this is common wisdom now, but I apparently enjoy learning all of
life's little lessons the hard way.

------
intenscia
16 years ago I created a database for video game mods and led the market. Now
I’m in the opposite position where services like Steam’s Workshop have taken
over. Despite that my conviction that mods are critically important has never
waivered, and alternatives / competition is required. So now I’m the upstart
and it feels good to be building something I’m passionate about and believe
in, despite the 200 ton gorilla in the room. We both serve slightly different
roles, developers using our tech love what we are creating and I’m confident
we can carve out a worthwhile piece of the pie.

Long story short I’m glad this is a rule I broke and didn’t let my inspiration
evaporate.

------
paraschopra
Copying ideas is highly underrated.

Competition is a fantastic signal of an existing market where customers are
likely used to paying. I think the fear of replicating an existing idea is
usually overblown while in reality every founder/entrepreneur ends up giving
the solution his/her own unique touch. Even if you're blindly copying an
existing product, you cannot help but add your past experience and your taste
for products in it.

I elaborated more on this in my essay: [https://invertedpassion.com/copying-
ideas-is-highly-underrat...](https://invertedpassion.com/copying-ideas-is-
highly-underrated/)

------
xtagon
I think it makes a difference whether you're looking for ideas that will do
well, vs just having an idea that you would go for as a pet project. I have
one of those "just a pet project" ideas which I have been developing for no
reason other than my own benefit, and let me tell you, I _love_ finding
competition. It's like Christmas every time I find out there's a service that
incorporates some of the concepts, and I keep a big document of inspiration
that draws between all of them.

If your idea isn't unique, you can still succeed, but you have to out-do the
competition on something other than uniqueness.

------
01100011
I realized a few years ago: You don't have to be the best. You just have to be
better than some. You can always cannibalize the market share of the current
worst performers. You get your start there, and build up as you can.

------
BinaryIdiot
For sure. I have concepts written down for things like a social network where
the user retains ownership of their data and advertisers can offer them money
for access to it. There are partial concepts out there like this but the
biggest issue preventing me from creating a prototype is simply that I don't
think I have the time to nurture a social network into being (which is
probably harder than creating the thing). You need people on it to gain other
people, a real chick and egg problem.

I still want to build the prototype. But, in trying to be realistic, I don't
think it'll become a business or even popular.

~~~
theNJR
I’ve got tons of pages written for a similar concept, only you pay for it.
Just as filters were the utility that drove the users which created the
network for early Instagram, I think data ownership can be the utility that
drives users for a for-pay social network.

This [0] kickstarter is trying to do a paid network, but I think they’ve over
complicated it.

[0][https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/factr/factr-the-
ethical...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/factr/factr-the-ethical-
social-network-focus-on-what-mat)

------
mariatechmaniac
Have you thought of 'joining' the competition?

We were somehow conditioned to believe that we either have to be the Founder
or nothing. We are not losers if we are employees and not employers.

We don't have to be the CEO to pursue an idea we are passionate about.

And if it is impact that you want; think that most often, the impact you can
have joining an existing successful company will be waay bigger than
reinventing the wheel and building your own.

I do respect the nobility of wanting to be your own boss and doing your own
awesome thing but in general(not giving advice for this specific case), that's
not the only way..

------
mch82
Clayton Christensen publishes “The Innovator’s Dilemma” in 1997.[1] No
incumbent is safe. It can be easier to be first to market, but being first
doesn’t mean permanent victory. If you believe your solution solves a problem
people have then it’s a fine choice to keep going.

Also, you’re going to need alignment between your funding, the skills of your
team, and your proposed solution.

[1]: The Innovator’s Dilemma, Wikipedia,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)

------
dsgriffin
Not so much about something already existing, but knowing how next-to-
impossible it'll be to compete against the Googles/Microsofts of the world
once the idea starts to take up steam/get noticed.

------
crazygorilla
Sometime its just a single feature that makes a difference. There are tons of
news aggregators out there but I decided to build my own anyways, because it
updates the website automatically without that I have to scroll. After I build
it I realized that I use it as a "second-screen website" where the news just
runs over the site like a ticker. I don't have a lot of visitors, but the ones
that come stay for a long time, that is great!
[http://www.uptopnews.com/](http://www.uptopnews.com/)

------
dusted
I usually loose inspiration when I've thought the idea through and concluded
whether it could be done, and whether it could be successful. If I know how to
build it, that's generally enough. Like The FinalKey, yes, I'm using it every
day, and I'm very happy with it, and many of those I've given one are very
happy with it, and can't understand that I didn't pursue it further.. Well, it
was done! and now there is FIDO and Mooltipass, so it's not needed anymore
anyway, so I get to move on to something else.

------
cjblomqvist
In my opinion...

It's quite established how to answer this question. More specifically, it's a
classic strategy question (with a lot of marketing in it). You should look up
what broad theory is applicable. My take (have an MBA or equivalent) is to
look at differentiation, segmentation, resource based strategy, feedback loops
and platform theory, Porter's five forces with critique, a static VS a dynamic
perspective.

If you can find a viable (hopefully quite sustainable) strategy, go for it. If
you can't, then don't.

~~~
apkallum
Would you be kind enough to point to resources where one could learn more
about this?

------
Can_Not
My inspiration for creating things may often not be "let's make X exist", but
rather "like X, but good". I make PWAs and APIs, so unfortunately making a
better Civilization V or a slack that performs like AIM isn't going to fit in
my schedule.

What puts me off is usually the lack of a usable API. Or, if closed source app
X has a gorilla that's holding the banana wrong, I might have to recreate the
entire jungle from scratch just to get some basic architectural or UX flow
fixed.

------
tombert
I actually started on a project recently _because_ a competing product already
exists.

I really dislike Emby and Plex server (I don't want to besmirch them here but
you can email me if you want a rant :) ), and as a result I've been working
on/off on a product to replace them.

I probably won't monetize it any time soon, but it's not off the table
honestly, since I personally feel that my system will be better. Even if it's
not, I had a lot of fun making it.

------
lxmorj
If you haven’t heard of them without doing competitive research, but you are
in the target market, then you can at least beat them at getting the word out.

------
myth2018
No. And I think that creating something entirely new is overrated sometimes:
one might argue that it's a requirement for a startup to achieve skyrocketing
growth rates. But it's pretty feasible to build a healthy business creating a
new version of something, specially on fields where customer relationship and
after-sales services play an important role. That's been my experience at
least.

------
tenaciousDaniel
I've developed a few ideas that I would love to work on, but I'm extremely
pessimistic about business ventures. If anything remotely similar to my idea
exists, I assume that they've considered my idea and there's something I'm
missing. Like there's some reason it wouldn't work the way I'm imagining, and
I'd fail.

So yeah, I tend to quit unless the idea is super unique.

------
iagooar
Everything exists by now. Every single idea that you might have has been tried
already. Your next startup is not going to be the first doing what it does.

Believe me: it’s not the idea that makes a great project / company. It’s the
execution. It’s the market fit. It’s providing the best solution possible.
It’s delighting your customers. It’s giving them real value for their money.

------
beckler
honestly, I don't mind something similar already exists.

the problem I'm having is how do I enter a niche space and get customers away
from my competition?

the niche I'm entering has existing solutions, but they're messy and difficult
to use (based on early feedback). I want to simplify a lot of it, but I know
in the beginning I'm going to lack a lot of features that current existing
solutions have.

If I keep at it, I'm sure I'll get to them eventually, but I think the lack of
some of these features could be a major deal breaker for some potential
customers early on. I don't want to cater to just larger customers, but I
don't want to ignore them either.

I'm just not sure what the right balance is going to be, but I think the only
way I'm going to figure it out is by engaging with potential customers for
their input, while also not pushing them to jump over unless they think we're
ready.

------
redact207
Some great advice here. To add another perspective: sometimes you don't know
where your idea will take you. A lot of your competition is locked into their
path. Being at the outset of yours, the customers you listen to along the way
may steer you in a different direction or pivot into a far better idea.

------
yitchelle
I have similar feeling when I do my research and see my ideas all over Google
search results.

My strategy now becomes how do I _disrupt_ the incumbent. I take inspiration
from Apple entering mp3 market, Uber entering the taxi market or Google
entering the search market. Have not yet achieve success but will continue to
try.

------
jamesmkenny
It doesn't put me off, but makes me more cautious. I need to put more effort
and focus on what makes my product different to the competition.

That clarity can really help push your product forward in a crowded market. I
also feel that doing 1 thing and doing it well or better at launch can really
help.

------
cik
I'm not put off at all - though I guess it depends on your goal? I want to
play with a couple of new languages. To do so, I'm taking a problem that's
already solved today (not in a way I love) and writing yet another entrant. My
goal is learning, not profit.

------
homero
There is no competition, only execution. Dropbox had been done before. I
remember something called X drive like a decade prior but it was no Dropbox.
And still no one does what they do. Google drive has yet to have a desktop
client that does anything like it.

------
Ozzie_osman
Zoom is not a typical example. In this case the founder already knew the space
and product really well. Eric Yuan was VP for webex at Cisco and hence already
knew the market, had the contacts, and understood what was holding webex back
as a product.

------
AstralStorm
Usually it is the question of age. If it is just a few years, you might have a
chance. If it's more than 20, you're probably either wrong about the potential
or it's a really tough market requiring huge investment or paradigm change.

------
the_arun
When I started thinking about home security - Comcast & companies like Arlo
came existence. But, they are not good enough from customer standpoint. Lots
of opportunities still exist for disruption - when we think from end customer
standpoint.

------
naveen99
Can you link to the existing implementation? Is it keybase ?

Work on it anyway, if you can’t beat them, maybe you can join them one day.
Even if you are second best, you will get free marketing from the #1, when
potential customers do their due diligence.

------
rb808
Depends on how your product will compete, but being first entrant isn't always
good. Apple copied their PC from IBM, their tablet from Microsoft, and their
ipod from others. They're successful because they do it better. Can you?

~~~
wolco
Or cheaper or faster or easier or targetted to a different group

------
ScottFree
Just out of curiosity, is anybody here looking to create a new consumer
operating system to compete with Windows and Mac? I'd like to, but I have no
idea where to start. Talk about putting it off because something already
exists! :)

~~~
sah2ed
You conveniently left out Linux, why :)?

Linus Torvalds recently did an interview [0], where he talked about, amongst
other things, just how hard it is to get an OS off the ground.

Excerpt: _“I used to think that some radical new and exciting OS would come
around and supplant Linux some day (hey, back in 1994 I probably still thought
that maybe Hurd would do it!), but it 's not just that we've been doing this
for a long time and are still doing very well, I've also come to realize that
making a new operating system is just way harder than I ever thought. It
really takes a lot of effort by a lot of people, and the strength of Linux—and
open source in general, of course—is very much that you can build on top of
the effort of all those other people._

 _So unless there is some absolutely enormous shift in the computing
landscape, I think Linux will be doing quite well another quarter century from
now.”_

0: [https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/25-years-later-
intervie...](https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/25-years-later-interview-
linus-torvalds)

~~~
ScottFree
Linux is not, nor has it ever been, a valid consumer operating system. Ever
year has supposedly been the year of the linux desktop since 1998 (21 years!).
Maybe it's time to give up the hope that Linux will ever challenge Windows or
MacOS on the Desktop.

~~~
sah2ed
> _Linux is not, nor has it ever been, a valid consumer operating system._

I disagree with your assertion since it wasn’t properly qualified. Linux is
indeed a valid consumer OS but it has never been a _mainstream_ OS on the
desktop. In spite of that, it has become a mainstream consumer OS on mobile,
in the form of Android.

Anyway, the original point of my reply was to highlight just how involved
building a new OS _from scratch_ is, relative to other software projects you
could work on. Add to that the unlikelihood of ever seeing a pay off for the
amount of resources that would need to be committed to such an endeavor,
unless you are under a big tech company.

~~~
ScottFree
What is the point of this whole thread? Did you just want to show what a smart
boy you are by stating the obvious? Yes, I'm well aware that developing a new
OS is hard. Everything worthwhile in life is hard. Why would I let that stop
me?

------
keithnz
Yes! But ironically I'm also put off by things not being done.

Currently working on a (side project) small service where I know at least one
place needs it. It's small enough in scope that I don't mind following it
through to completion.

------
rossenberg79
I always tell people there is no point in worrying about whether or not
someone has already started building your idea first, what you should worry
about is the person who will come after you with your same idea, but better.

------
zzo38computer
Not really; even if it already exist it may be different from what I want in
various ways, so, I can make up a new one. (In the case of FOSS, sometimes it
is suitable to modify an existing one, although also sometimes not.)

------
no_plebs
It all depends on how it's being done.

As they say, no idea is original. If you have one that is, go for it.
Otherwise take a preexisting idea and make it yours. Do it in a way that's
never been done before.

------
taneq
If you're just building an exact clone of something and not innovating, then
no.

If you see something and think it could be done much better, then you're not
building the same thing. Go for it!

------
sbov
I work for a small company that is always trying out new projects. Most of
them are ideas that already exist out there, but we feel the current solutions
are lacking in some major way.

------
abhinuvpitale
Does looking it up afterwards help or not?

Imo, its better if you start working on it, propose your solution and then see
what exists. This might just help you think and ideate in an unbiased way

------
Gehinnn
What is the name of the existing service? I am interested in trying it out :)
I also once had the idea of a reverse address book but didn't think many
people would use it.

------
bitxbit
I have put off an idea because it’s not technologically feasible yet. However,
that’s given me years of tinkering with the same idea in my mind, therapeutic
to some extent.

------
jshowa3
Build it anyways. Who cares if there's competition. The point is, would you be
better if you did build it?

99% of the time, it would be a yes. Even if it didn't pass market.

------
kasey_junk
Who was the existing provider cause I could use that.

------
GoblinSlayer
Usually only an alternative exists, not exactly what I do. FWIW I steal ideas
from other people for my projects.

------
StreamBright
Absolutely not. Only if the thing exists already satisfies all my needs and I
could not build a better version.

------
jv22222
This is quite a nuanced subject. It's something I've had a chance to think
long and hard about and discuss with many founders.

I wrote a lesson about it in the Nugget Startup Academy but it's behind a
paywall. Here's a screen shot of that lesson. Apologies about the format and
hope it helps your thinking on the subject:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ufpfrcarg7v5f3/competition.png?dl...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ufpfrcarg7v5f3/competition.png?dl=0)

------
dharma1
Who beat you to the reverse address book? I haven't seen a de facto option for
this

------
AstralStorm
By the way, if your idea is Facebook you're 20 years too late.

(Facebook is a reverse address book.)

------
mapcars
The trick is what you are building can not exist, something similar can, but
not _it_.

------
epynonymous
never.

i like how bill nguyen, founder of the color app, used to say, and i
paraphrase, but he never cares about what other people have made, just focus
on creating the best experience or something to that effect.

------
fiatjaf
Well, Zoom had probably tons of funding.

------
raj_khare
Myspace existed before Facebook

------
graphememes
Quite a few things.

------
sonnyblarney
Consider that 99% of new products are evolutionary, they don't represent a
fundamental new approach or a fundamental new innovation. Most real innovation
is incremental, and small, and new 'great products' are a compendium of a lot
of little things.

------
apolymath
Nope! I found a success story on HN and now I'm stealing their idea and making
it better, because I see a barely tapped market that deserves a better
product.

~~~
wayoverthecloud
Wanna collaborate?

------
est
> Zoom is a recent and great example of competing in a crowded market and
> winning.

If you read Zoom's S1 filing, you will find they were profitable because they
have their R&D in China.

------
Animats
First question: are you rich? Because you're going to have to buy market
share.

