
Ask HN: Join forces or compete with big player? - curo
We&#x27;re a year into a project with moderate traction, and just found out that a big company in our industry is building their own similar system. It won&#x27;t replace ours and they did nothing wrong (like copy us), they&#x27;re just heading in the same direction.<p>Any experience with this? Did you reach out to them and join forces or stay quiet and compete? (If we wrote them a proposal, we&#x27;d be giving away our secret sauce.)<p>It looks like a side gig for them, but one they&#x27;re investing in heavily. Not sure what a win-win arrangement looks like.
======
anoncoward111
How much money have you invested? How profitable are you?

If you haven't invested a lot, and you are very profitable, then you should
compete with them. You have low risk and high reward.

If you've invested a lot, and you aren't very profitable, then I would
probably reach out to them to see what arrangement you can set up. The idea
here is that you want to protect your original investment. If they start
soaking up customers and you guys start losing money, then you go out of
business and lose all your money.

And if you're kind of in the middle, it's a bit of a coin toss. You probably
should double down, acquire some big customers and more traction, and then
decide if you should sell the company if future prospects don't look good.

A profitable buyout is a profitable buyout. If you don't see a path to
becoming a massively profitable business, then go get bought (Github) or set
up a scammy IPO (Blue Apron)

~~~
curo
lol Blue Apron. "Kind of in the middle" is right. Bootstrapping well enough to
pay the bills, but not so well to hire and grow, or compliment missing talent.
Okay, thanks for the feedback!

~~~
anoncoward111
Good luck, I'm happy to help! Competition is good for consumers, but bad for
business owners.

I think a good rule of thumb is, "if customers aren't banging down the door
trying to buy our product, we either need to risk more resources for a chance
at growth, or raise our margins and pray we survive"

------
sharemywin
I wouldn't give up your secret sauce. let them learn with their money.

Maybe look at partnering with one of their competitors.

~~~
curo
+1 to partnering with one of their competitors, feels like we could help
someone catch up to them at least

