
Ask HN: Does it matter to be the first on the market? - bobnarizes
I need an urgent advise from all product creators&#x2F;designers&#x2F;engineers&#x2F;entrepreneurs!
Just a few hours ago, I found out that the project that I was working on really hard for the last 6 months exists for a few days already on Kickstarter. 
It&#x27;s exactly the same idea, exactly the same product.
This is not the first time that something like this happened to me.<p>1) Did something like this happen to you before, what did you do? It is really frustrating...<p>2) What would you do?<p>3) Continue working on it or throw everything in the trash and focus on new things?<p>4) Is there anything I can do to avoid this?
======
cdnsteve
If you seriously invested 6 months already, stop everything and ship it in the
next 5 days Cut out anything/everything feature wise you had planned and focus
on shipping, now. Competing products are offered all the time, everywhere you
look. It's because there is a strong problem area and demand for them.

What makes them better/different or noticeable? Marketing. Take a look at the
web hosting industry. There are literally thousands and thousands of web
hosting companies all offering (nearly*) the same thing. They differentiate by
reputation and marketing. Ask any small business owner if they have a website,
then ask them have they heard of AWS? I bet they won't. They'll be use Joe
Host down the street from him or GoDaddy or won't have a clue and they have a
"web person" to take care of that.

A product idea only gets you so far. Now you need to master how to get people
to find it, tell them they need it and get them to sign up by hopefully
providing you their credit card for X service/product. Your journey is just
starting.

~~~
iman453
Would you have any recommendations for resources that an engineer who has no
idea about marketing can use to learn how go about marketing a product?

~~~
zombieprocess
Some useful resources:
[https://www.devmarketingguide.com/](https://www.devmarketingguide.com/)

There is also an edX course for this @
[https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-marketing-ubcx-
marke...](https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-marketing-ubcx-marketing1x)

------
elorant
1 & 2) I crashed the market but only after the other guy had soften clients
into the service. I sold it at a price level where competition couldn’t keep
up. It didn’t really hurt me in the long term although it changed my plans
short term.

3) So what, every time you face completion you’ll just run away? You have a
six months head start. Work on it. He’s doing the marketing with that
Kickstarter campaign, you ship the product.

4) You make it sound like it’s your fault that competition caught up. Either
you think that someone stole your idea, or you need a reality check (no pun
intended). Competition would occur anytime, you may think that it’s bad it
happened before launching but it could be equally bad if a year from now
someone with deep pockets took an aim at your market. Bottom line, competition
is a given, learn to live with that. Use it to make your product better.

~~~
patates
I usually get the idea from the comments on HN that competing on price alone
just doesn't work. Do you think that's a myth or did you have special case at
hand?

~~~
elorant
I guess that depends on the amount of competitors. If there are a lot of
companies offering the same product then lowering prices wouldn’t do you any
good long term. If on the other hand you’re competing against one or two, then
you could easily drive them off the market. The latter worked in my case, I
was only competing against one guy and like the OP I had a head start. I had
the luxury of selling too cheap because I’ve already invested the time and
money into building the product. He hadn’t.

------
panabee
Entrepreneurs often share startup ideas and hear, “Isn’t X doing the same
thing?” This is actually the common case as only one company can claim the
first-to-market mantle.

It’s natural to feel discouraged or wonder if the window of opportunity
passed, but history has proven unequivocally: first-to-market guarantees
nothing.

Never abandon an idea because competitors exist. Abandon an idea because it
lacks meaningful differentiation, because no one wants it more than the
alternatives.

Here are inspiring examples of companies and products that flourished despite
entering the market after others:

Facebook > Myspace

Google > Alta Vista

Nike > Converse

iPhone > BlackBerry

Instagram > Hipstamatic

Airbnb > CouchSurfing

WhatsApp > SMSenger

Dropbox > FolderShare

Skype > Net2Phone

Zappos > Shoebuy

Gmail > Hotmail

YouTube > Metacafe

LinkedIn > Ryze

Tumblr > Xanga

Kickstarter > Indiegogo

~~~
cpayne
Dropbox and Youtube always spring to mind. There were Dropbox solutions for
YEARS before they came around.

Even Microsoft had one (well before OneDrive) they gave away for free - still,
Dropbox came to the top.

And Youtube and a bunch of clones.

Go back even further: MS Word - Wordperfect Excel - Lotus 123 Just about every
dinky database - MS Access

~~~
flukus
Youtube in particular. I think it was about timing, broadband was just getting
to the critical point where even grandma could watch videos. But people were
trying to make youtube in the mid 90's.

------
jnpatel
Justin Kan has this great quote: "Startups mostly don't compete against each
other, they compete against no one giving a shit."

[https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/614904706624720896](https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/614904706624720896)

------
ImTalking
How can it be the exact same product when developed independently? Your
product will fork away as you and your customers decide what is important just
as they will.

Answers to your questions:

1) Yes. It happens to everyone. And you want it to happen because being first
is very expensive. You have to educate the market place and that takes time
and money. Plus if you were the first and started to succeed, do you think
that other startups (or larger companies that smell an opportunity) wouldn't
pour into that marketplace? That's the market-based system hard at work.

2) Joel Spolsky and a million others have said to ignore your competitors and
concentrate on the customers. Nothing your competitors ever do will be as
significant as just listening to the people who will ultimately use your
product. So carry on. Mate, eventually you will have to deal with competitors
so you might as well train your mind and your company to deal with this as
early as possible.

3) That's ridiculous. If you are passionate about the idea then fight harder
now.

4) Yes, you could create an economy where the first company with a particular
idea gets a 17 year monopoly. Seriously, you fight because, eventually, if the
idea is good and the market is large enough, the competitors will be flocking
in. Learn to handle this now. You buckle down and work twice as hard.

You need to realise that nothing, and I mean nothing, gets done until you have
customers. You think you've been working hard now but you haven't. Customers
are the only difference between a startup and a successful business.

Overall, I think this will be a good thing for you. It's (bluntly) lit a fire
under your ass and will make you re-assess your plans to create a more
customer-centric plan. Good luck.

------
gokhan
Idea is %5-10 most of the time. It's the execution which makes the difference.
Ideas tend to popup at multiple places at the same time, since they are fed
but other ideas and multiple people reach to the same conclusion with the same
input.

Do you think they will execute better? What if both of you succeeds? Is the
market big enough for multiple players? Do you really need more time to go to
market? (6 months is quite long for an mvp)

Besides, why don't you tell us what you're working on? Do you think someone
will copy it or something? If that's the case, maybe it's something easily
implementable and that can also happen after your release as well. In that
case, those guys on Kickstarter won't do any harm, this will be the nature of
your market.

------
greenyoda
The fact that someone else is working on the same product tells you that
you're not the only person who thinks there's a market for this product.
That's probably useful to know - it validates your idea.

Many of the most successful products today were not the first in their market:
Google wasn't the first search engine, Facebook wasn't the first social
network, the iPhone wasn't the first smart phone, etc. They succeeded because
of innovative features and business skills, not because they were first to
market.

------
downandout
Execution is the key. There were lots of messengers before both Snapchat and
WhatsApp, for example, yet they are now dominant. The idea is almost
irrelevant, except that the product needs to be valuable to some group of
people.

As others have said, launch now and see what happens. Don't assume that most
of the market has seen your competitor simply because it is on Kickstarter and
_you_ have seen it. There are billions of people in the world, and probably at
least millions of potential customers/users of your product. Most have neither
seen the other product nor had a chance to decide that it is better than
yours.

------
svisser
Not necessarily.

There is even an argument that you want to be "the last" on the market.

For example, Google is the last "search engine" \- it wasn't the first search
engine on the market but it did grow to dominate the market when it arrived.

------
codegeek
Take a look at this:

\- Friendster

\- Myspace

\- orkut

\- Lycos

\- Altavista

What is common with all these above ? They were one of the first if not THE
first to enter the market and they were all destroyed ultimately by facebook
and google. If there is one evidence like this, then you can conclude that
being first in the market is not everything. Mind you, these companies were no
minnows during their time.

Let me say this. If your project fails, it will not be because you were second
or last in the market. Most likely, it will be due to bad execution, unfit
market, no validation, poor management, founder conflict, shitty product, no
marketing and others.

~~~
webmaven
You can't really count Orkut, it was a Googler's 20% project without anything
like the resources or management support that G+ had.

It also wasn't at all "Googley". I wasn't at all surprised it was left to
wither and die on the vine.

------
dazhbog
TL;DR No it doesn't matter, 99.9% of the time. Its all about execution. Most
consumers will change to a more capable product if it's placed in front of
them, it solves their problems better and the cost of switching is low.

We all think that we are special snowflakes and that our idea is unique.
Unfortunately, there are probably tens or hundreds of other groups of people
working on the same idea of yours, at this very moment. These guys launching
on KS probably have been working way longer than you on this idea, maybe one
or more years. Having competitors is a good sign vs. no competitors at all.
Note here, profitable competitors is a good metric, not just KS campaigns!

1) Yes it happens all the time! Don't try to defend your idea with patents,
try and build a better product and serve your customers better.

2) Don't get discouraged, instead take some time to reflect why you are doing
this, how are you solving your customer's problems. Why is your solution
better or how could it be better. Can you execute this project to the end?
Have you talked to your users about their problems? Do they get excited when
you tell them about your solution? Can you bootstrap your way to a campaign or
even better, to some beta units? It's all about execution.

3) Not enough data to advice. Follow your gut feeling..

4) Nothing to do to avoid others doing it. Don't be defensive about it,
embrace it and try and build a better product.

PS: Remember to have fun and enjoy your self (ZEN of business).

Hope this helps :)

------
cuantos
There is a strategy called fast follower where you run behind a competitor
(first mover) waiting for them to trip up. Quite often they do. You can learn
from their mistakes, operate leaner, you take different risks, make different
partnerships, etc.

Often the first mover advantage comes with a lot of pride leading to arrogance
and them making unforced errors.

Keep your head and focus on execution, margin and survival. Who knows what the
future holds.

I'm the lastest entrant in a very mature market and I'm cleaning up.

~~~
Lordarminius
> There is a strategy called fast follower where you run behind a competitor
> (first mover) waiting for them to trip up.

And its not a bad strategy to adhere to either.

Here's a good article championing "fast follower" over "first mover"
[http://www.businessinsider.com/youre-better-off-being-a-
fast...](http://www.businessinsider.com/youre-better-off-being-a-fast-
follower-than-an-originator-2010-10)

------
encoderer
Keep working on it. You have an advantage of being able to address the
weakness of your competitor. In fact I started my SaaS business, Cronitor,
because I was unhappy with the incumbent.

If you'll excuse the cliche: pioneers take the arrows, settlers take the land.

Finally, six months of hard work and nothing is shipped? This is your answer
to #4. Ship early and often. Six months is an incredible investment without
feedback from users.

------
perlgeek
There's another option. You could consider teaming up with the folks on
kickstarter.

If I were trying to build a thing, and somebody told me: "hey, I've had the
same idea as you did, and worked half a year on it", I'd be intrigued to learn
from their experience, and maybe even consider some form of collaboration.

~~~
jcoffland
Why would the other team consider cutting someone else in when they had
already gotten so far?

~~~
onion2k
If bringing someone else in increases the chance of their success by more than
the cost of paying that person then it's a net gain. It's why businesses
employ people, investments get made, and deals happen.

------
rubberstamp
Idea might be the same. But execution is the one that really matters. Make a
list of features. Really think if you need to implement all of those features
right away. Prioritize by feature importance. If your execution is better than
anyone else's, your product would be the one on top on areas where both
products exists. Pricing would also matter.

Many of my ideas also existed when I first started to imagine solutions to
different problems. But I realized execution really matters.

Take example of google search, macintosh etc. Search and personal computers
did exist before those. Similarly PC market is over crowded. Product quality
and experience matters a lot.

Keep building. It would be an experience. As long as you have one or more
strong features that gives your product strong advantage you are in the good.

------
mindcrime
It's not all just about the product. I recommend you read _The Discipline of
Market Leaders_. That book does a good job of explaining how there are many
different factors you can choose to compete on.

------
rl3
I've had this happen twice.

The first time I gave up. In retrospect I'm thankful I did, because I later
came to realize I wasn't a true believer in the idea. Although it was valid
from a business perspective (as evidenced by the other people doing it), it
wasn't anything that truly excited me. If you're trying to build something
exceptional, being excited matters for both morale and creativity reasons.

Regardless, in retrospect the first idea still could have succeeded. The
competition's execution, while initially virtually identical, significantly
diverged later on.

The second time featured very similar initial execution, followed by a
divergence so large that I don't even consider them competitors anymore. It's
even happened a few more times on the same idea, and each time the end result
is wild divergence. This is likely a result of the second idea being more
complex.

The moral of the story is that you shouldn't worry about competitors, even if
it looks like doom and gloom right now.

Divergence in execution is proportional to idea complexity. Unless the idea in
question is dead simple with no conceivable variation, press on.

Even so, press on anyways if you're a strong believer and the idea excites
you.

If you have considerable time invested but don't believe in a way that excites
you: kick it out the door fast, throw it against the wall and see if it
sticks.

Good luck.

------
Animats
Get the product out the door before the Kickstarter gets funded or ships, and
you should be OK. Most Kickstarters don't happen. Even some that are heavily
funded don't ship.

Look at "Coolest Cooler". $13,285,226 pledged of $50,000 goal, 62,642 backers,
announced in 2014, the price has climbed from $100 to $400, and they still
haven't shipped all the backer units. Even on simple products with heavy
funding, the execution can be botched.

------
erichocean
My current startup has literally hundreds of competitors in a winner-takes-all
market. I've also randomly run into a number of other people in SoCal who have
_tried_ to do what we're doing (and failed to get something the market—or
they, themselves—actually wants to use).

It's a very simple concept, but as others have noted: execution is key. It's
not the first product to market that wins, it's the first product that the
market wants that wins.

------
choxi
1\. This happens all the time, the market is very efficient. If your idea has
any merit there's almost always going to be a competitor near you.

But, as your business evolves, you'll move closer to some competitors and
further from others. I think of it like ships sailing in the sea: you might be
close to a competitor right now, but have very different trajectories (moving
up vs. down on the pricing curve, expanding your product assortment
horizontally versus vertically, focusing on different segments of the market,
improving on different aspects of the product, etc).

2\. One of your jobs is going to be to navigate that competitive landscape. It
shouldn't necessarily keep you up at night, you need to focus on the problems
in front of you instead of being constantly paranoid about competitors, but
you do need to be strategic about where you steer your ship to stay
differentiated.

Is the other product _exactly_ the same? Could you differentiate on brand,
focus on a different market niche, do it cheaper/better, have better design?

3\. It depends on #2. If I could think of a way to differentiate and leap frog
the first product, I would try that. If not, I'd probably launch it anyway if
I've spent 6 months on it. What do you have to lose?

4\. You can't avoid it altogether. There will always be competitors if you're
creating something valuable, if not now then later. One of my friends runs a
company that builds SaaS for janitorial quality control (a relatively niche
market) and even he has competitors. Navigating the competitive landscape is
just something you have to continuously do as a founder.

------
vorotato
They may never get funded, and if you stop because of them well you just
wasted time you could have been spending polishing your product. Polish your
branding. Continue working on it. You can't avoid someone coming up with a
clone product, but you can create a better product. Chances are a person who
clones an idea is in for a easy buck and will not put the necessary time and
effort to produce a high quality product. They will not put the energy into
customer service that you will. Make sure your customers know that you stand
by your product, and that you will be available to them long after the product
has shipped.

------
beachstartup
that slight feeling of panic you have -- that is what running a business feels
like, all the time, non-stop. what you choose to do with that feeling is up to
you.

------
lpolovets
My perspective as a VC: if you're building _exactly_ the same product then
that sucks. You'll only be able to compete on price, and that's not a good
outcome. Execution is important, but that's more clear after launch, once
people try out both products, write reviews, etc.

However, having a competitor launch just before you gives the advantage of
seeing their messaging, seeing how people react to it (esp. in the comments
section and in how quickly/slowly the project gets funded), and might give you
ideas for how to better differentiate. If you do a good job with that
differentiation then your competitor will educate the market while you get
people excited by releasing something that's better in some key way. The
differentiation could be in your product, your messaging, how you package or
bundle your product, etc.

You shouldn't throw 6 months of work away. You can think of what you've built
as no better than the competition, or you can think of it as 90% of the way to
being a lot better than the competition. I think the second mindset is more
constructive.

------
cpayne
1) Yes, a couple of times. But in the long run, we were so much better for it.

(For me at least!) I overestimated how _obvious_ my product idea was. You see
this all the time! The marketing effort becomes two-fold. You have this pain
point (or opportunity), and here's a product that solves that pain point.

By being 2nd / 3rd / etc. the 1st person has already educated the potential
client

2) Pay real attention to what the 1st to market was doing well. Can you copy /
replicate it? Be aware of your mindset. Is this really a "winner takes all"
situation? Or is there room for the both of you?

3) Why are you doing this? Is it to make a bazillion dollars? Or something
more satisfying? Plenty of businesses (Stackoverflow, 37 Signals) have a
certain "quality of life" \- clearly they enjoy doing what they do. Why are
you doing this?

4) Are you really really sure this is a bad thing? How many businesses can you
think of that did fantastic from Kickstarter?

Compare that to how many Kickstarters were... less than successful?

------
rsp1984
First of all, you wrote the other party has put it on Kickstarter. That
doesn't mean the product exists yet. They are just announcing it. They might
in fact never ship (this happened to countless Kickstarter projects).
Announcements are so much easier than actually shipping product and making
customers happy so I wouldn't be too concerned about timing right now.

To your questions:

1) Yes, but so what? They are probing the market for you and you get to enjoy
free market research. If their KS succeeds then you know you're working on
something valuable. If they fail, then either there's no demand for the
product or they haven't executed well (which would be a chance for you to do
better).

2) Sit back and enjoy the show. And keep working on your product. There's
likely a lot of opportunity to differentiate down the road.

3) Continue and watch how their KS goes.

4) Of course not. But it's not necessarily a bad thing.

------
alashley
To borrow a line from the rapper Drake, "It ain't about who did it first, its
about who did it right."

------
kazinator
Most of the time, as a rule of thumb, the third product in the same class will
succeed more than the first or second.

Was Facebook the first social network? It ate Myspace for dinner, plus things
like Orkut.

Shimano didn't invent derailleurs.

Google and Samsung didn't have the first touch screen smartphone.

------
labrador
Another possibility (I'm not suggesting anything) is to consider contacting
the other project and seeing if it makes sense to both parties to join forces.
You may each have strengths that complement each other.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Are you sure it's exactly the same idea and exactly the same product as you
say? Sometimes it can seem like that because there's a lot of overlap but it's
hard to end up creating something that is exactly the same as something else
independently. Isolate features and the ways that you are doing things that
may be different and focus on why there are differences. Perhaps yours is more
convenient or easier, or provides some unexpected benefit the other one
doesn't.

------
toast0
The only time first matters is in patent filing. If your product is
patentable, you should probably file (or publish) as soon as you can, so you
don't have to fight someone else's patent later.

Other than that, I can't think of any current large successful businesses that
were first to market. It's usually much easier to build something you know can
be built (because it's in the market), especially because you can see which
parts are important and need more focus.

------
eps
It really depends on how trivial the idea is and if there are any significant
difficulties with implementation.

If it's something simple and easy to replicate, then those with better
marketing will win. But if it's a technically hard product, then it comes down
to execution.

In either case being first to the market matters only if you have a trully
innovative idea with immediate mass appeal.

------
return0
It matters to be the last one , not the first one.

------
fillskills
Focus on completing your product and launching it well. Focus on your plans,
not theirs. The difference is continuous execution. e.g. Better marketing,
keeping costs low, keeping quality high etc. As an fellow entrepreneur I get
this feeling everytime we get new competition. You will get immune to this
after you get through the first few.

------
epynonymous
happened to me before, and it rocked me because i had finally found and
started to implement an idea of mine that i thought was really what had
passion for, and i thiught it was unique. later on i found that there was
something similar, but not exactly the same, and it depressed and destroyed my
motivation all in one fell swoop because this company had been around for 2
years already in the market, but after awhile, i realized that this is not
necessarily a bad thing, it totally validates that there's a market for this,
so i got back on my proverbial horse and started back on my passion wave!

look at the iphone, at the time blackberry and nokia were in the market for
years and dominant players, did it mean that they should give up? granted
apple had the funds and resources to go big on iphone, but you're up against a
kickstarter product, not exactly rim or nokia of that time :)

------
marcus_holmes
I'd be more worried if there wasn't anyone else doing it. That probably means
that other people tried and failed and there's something very tricky about
this idea or market that makes it hard to do.

You will always have competition. Uniqueness is not required for hairdressers,
why is it required for startups?

------
niccl
Implementation is everything. Many years ago I was first to market with what
are now called Intelligent Lights (moving stage lights). We were incredibly
naive and under-funded and got blown out of the water by Vari*lite (funded by
the band Genesis).

So, no, you don't have to give up: just do it better.

------
jwatte
Deliver better. Success comes in execution, not idea.

Also, first movers don't always win, because second movers can learn without
maintaining legacy.

Who would you rather be? MySpace or Facebook? Alta Vista or Google? ICQ or
Skype?

------
swalsh
Digg came out before Reddit, look who came out ahead. Being first gives you an
initial boost, but what really will matter is who has the better product, and
who markets those advantages better.

------
adolfoabegg
Launch first if possible. If you don't then there's still other ways to
position your product.

Read: Positioning by Al Ries. Oldie but goldie.

Good luck.

------
enraged_camel
The existence of competition can be a very good validator for the idea. The
further along the competition, the stronger the validation.

------
fsloth
I'm an armchair economist at most but generally having a market is not a
negative sign.

------
neom
Depends on if you're a product company or a technology company, I suspect.

