

Ask YC:  Are there ideas that are “done to death”? - pharaohgeek

I&#x27;ve often had grand epiphanies...  Huge, earth-changing, multi-zillion dollar ideas!  Only to find out (usually 5 minutes later) that the idea has not only been done already, but it&#x27;s been done by a couple dozen different companies.  More often than not, these companies also include huge companies, such as Facebook or Google, that would be nearly impossible to compete with.<p>My question is this...  Is it true that there are ideas that really are &quot;done to death&quot;?  I look at the online dating market.  Match, eHarmony, jDate, PoF, etc. have saturated the market and taken up a huge amount of marketshare.  At the end of the day, though, they&#x27;re really all the same.  They may target different interests or demographics, but there&#x27;s really no difference.  Is online dating done to death?  Should someone even bother getting into that market again?<p>A more recent example is in messaging apps.  Once the Snowden docs went public, it seemed like everybody and their brother put out a &quot;secure&quot; messaging app.  Are there too many of them now?  Could one really gain any traction in a market that has literally hundreds of messaging apps on the iOS AppStore?  I&#x27;ve had an idea for a while on how to increase the security and anonymity of messaging apps.  But, with the sheer volume of competitors it almost seems to me like I shouldn&#x27;t even bother coding it up.  Is this an idea that has been &quot;done to death&quot;?<p>Or, is the whole notion of something being done to death merely a logical fallacy?  Is it worth competing?  Is there enough money&#x2F;eyeballs to go around?  I&#x27;d REALLY be interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject.  Having good ideas is really inspiring; but, seeing that there are already a LOT of other people in that space has become really discouraging.
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smt88
Nothing has been done to death, nor will it ever be. There's been a lot of
research that first-movers are almost never the ultimate victors in an
industry. Furthermore, being a "victor" (no matter how huge) doesn't last
forever. Every company has a rise, decline, and death.

Small companies can always, _always_ disrupt a giant. The reason is that a
giant, in order to sustain itself, must cater to everyone. It's impossible to
do that well, and they'll always leave niches that are under-served. That's
where a small company can come in, dominate that niche, and slowly take over
the market. Clayton Christensen has famously researched and written about that
process.

That said, ideas are meaningless. No one succeeds because they had a great
idea, except maybe the Tim Ferrisses of the world who "bend the rules" and
screw people over.

All that matters is execution. You might have an online dating idea, and it
might be great, but can you actually execute? Launching a consumer brand costs
millions these days because of the high costs of customer acquisition. Do you
have that money? Would investors feel confident giving it to you?

Or, if you want to start a B2B company, do you have an unfair advantage that
will catapult you over all the other people doing the exact same thing? Do you
know lots of people in that industry, or were you yourself one of them, so you
understand them particularly well?

Don't get hung up on ideas. No idea is new, and usually if you have an idea
that _no one_ has done, it's because it's a terrible idea. Don't be afraid of
competition. You don't have any until someone is actually taking your
customers away from you, and tiny startups don't tend to have that issue for a
while.

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debacle
It depends on your definition of "done to death."

There are definitely solution spaces where it is impossible to be profitable
right now. Especially if two tech giants (FB/Google) are competing in that
space - they likely can't even profit in the space because if their
competition with each other.

You also have to consider traction. Facebook is not the paragon of social
networks (in fact they're a bit ass), but no one is going to pull the reins
from them while they continue to have as much user traction.

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MalcolmDiggs
Well, if you've never heard of a company offering that service/product, then
you're probably not alone there.

Someone offering a product doesn't mean they have saturated the market for it,
or even made the average customer aware that they exist.

Even if they do exist, and they have saturated the market, the fact that you
still want to build a different product might mean there is innovation left to
do in that space.

So no, I don't think anything is really done to death. If you want to do it,
go with your gut.

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LarryMade2
I had an elderly friend who got into on-line dating, a lot of those apps use
the same engine (or really similar ones). Of all those they weren’t really
user friendly for the 70+ crowd. In fact a lot of things are very unfriendly
for the 70+ crowd.

Secondly, from observation I see that every time there is a new platform,
there is room for a few more instances of X.

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mod
Slightly off-topic: you probably shouldn't do a secure messaging app.

Security experts agree: if you're not an expert, don't build security apps /
systems.

Back on topic: I say if you can come up with a plan to compete with existing
competitors, and it seems reasonable to you--go for it.

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eddie_31003
I think there is always room for a better mouse trap.

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hyp0
search was considered done to death before google. of course, it really is
done to death now...

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marcofiset
What about DuckDuckGo's recent explosion in popularity?

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hyp0
The excessive certainly combined with ellipses was meant to imply irony.

Essay Time. But DDG + NSA is interesting. Google was attractive to users
because it gave them what they wanted - instead of the busy "portals" and paid
placement. It was fast, honest, clear and had a better ranking algorithm.

Today, people don't want to be tracked/monitored, and unfortunately that is
key to Google's business model. They were right to aggressively try to head
off facebook, but wrong to abuse users to do it. They are definitely "evil"
(their "don't be evil" meant don't be like microsoft or IBM, who pushed users
around as it suited. Arguably, a publically traded corp is legally obliged to
put profit above people - ie be "evil"; but it is possible to serve both, as
google once did).

So, DDG is giving users what they want, and out-googling google, in a specific
sense.

It's been said it's difficult to create _sustainable competitive advantage_ in
search, because users can trivially switch. But one thing google has been
great at is fast response times. Users really care about this, and because
it's so expensive to build huge server farms all over the world, this aspect
is a SCA. DDG is far slower than google; and google suggest often feels local
to me. Perhaps this could be replicated with AWS, but DDG hasn't done it.

But I think you're right: previously DDG was a niche success. But with the
change in what users want (because of NSA/snowden revelations, and likely
there'll be others), that is absolutely inconsistent with Google's business
model for ads, then DDG really could overthrow them. But DDG make enough money
to afford comparable server-farm investment? (Still, that gets cheaper all the
time...)

Google could of course go back to being purely about search, and not acquire
user data so aggressively... but giving up user modeling would massively
undermine their ad profits, and they are now slaves to Wall Street.

So... interesting.

