
Ask HN: Startup could be killed with a single feature? - quotz
Should I start a startup that could potentially be killed by a big corp if they implement the feature that my product is built on? Its a product based on a strong community around it, which is a plus, but still very risky.
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allenleein
I think big corp rarely killed a startup.

Some quotes from famous startup people:

“In a big company, you can do what all the other big companies are doing. But
a startup can’t do what all the other startups do. I don’t think a lot of
people realize this, even in startups. The average big company grows at about
ten percent a year.

So if you’re running a big company and you do everything the way the average
big company does it, you can expect to do as well as the average big company —
that is, to grow about ten percent a year. The same thing will happen if
you’re running a startup, of course. If you do everything the way the average
startup does it, you should expect average performance.

The problem here is, average performance means that you’ll go out of
business.”- Paul Graham

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"What makes disruption so devastating is the fact that, absent a crisis, it is
almost impossible to avoid. Managers are paid to leverage their advantages,
not destroy them; to increase margins, not obliterate them." \- Naval Ravikant

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Personally, I think if your business fits in a market design by someone else,
you are “default dead”. Pepsi never catches Coke. Bing never catches Google.
Google Pixel never catches iPhone. The real question is can you design a
market that you can dominate. Ignore competition from big corp.

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tinktank
Jobs told the dropbox guys that their product was a feature... go figure.

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saluki
Most startups could be killed with a single feature initially.

If you're interested in working on it and have passion about it go for it.

Most big corps have lots of layers/decision makers so chances are slim they
would attack your feature before you have traction, users and a community
built around it.

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ishjoh
is there an additional thing that would make people stick around even if that
other company built the feature?

Seeing a feature that can make a big difference to people is a great place to
start, if you can plan a road map that will help you to grow your user base,
is even better.

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quotz
So it lets people earn for a living from the platform, and the product is also
build on a community, very different from the big corp competitor

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jxr006
i'm going to quote Sam.

This doesn't sound like a business, sounds like a feature.

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celticninja
How much would it cost to launch? How fast could you recoup your investment?

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quotz
Not much at all. Could probably build the MVP in 2 months. But it could take a
few years to build a community around it.

