

Open Table files for IPO. - rokhayakebe
http://venturebeat.com/2009/01/30/no-reservation-required-opentable-plans-to-make-first-venture-backed-ipo-of-2009/

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rokhayakebe
Seriously, where is the startup competition?

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Shooter
This has been discussed on HN before...

One of the reasons they have little competition is because much of the value
they deliver is in the form of the POS (Point-of-Sale) systems they provide
restaurants. I don't think those are even mentioned in the article. They also
have a decent sales organization on the ground pushing their wares and
providing training. They offer some analytics. (Etc. Etc. Etc.) Most blogs and
magazines significantly simplify the business model or value proposition of
companies like this so that they can tell the story in the space of one
article...

I'm not saying that there isn't an opportunity for a competitor...but I think
many people dramatically underestimate what it takes to go into markets like
this and compete. To be a bit snarky, a cloud-hosted Rails/Django app is not
the answer to every question, and not EVERY market can be conquered with just
software, ramen, and ambition ;-) It's not simply a matter of someone throwing
up a CRUD site to undercut them on price and then watching the checks roll in.
Yeah, it looks easy to compete with them after reading one of these articles,
but they are doing many things that it would be difficult for a small (and
likely underfunded) startup to do. A team of 2-5 just isn't going to have the
time or bandwidth to unseat them unless they have another trick up their
sleeve. I think there are many better opportunities for YC-style startups out
there.

~~~
kmt
I assume you mean this discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231999>

I'm really curious, has anyone here started competition? edu perhaps?
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232092>) Anyone else?

