

Ask HN: early project and new direct competitor - aymeric

Hi everyone,<p>I am developing a facebook application that helps people achieve their goals (http://apps.facebook.com/dogether)<p>I knew there were two competitors: http://www.43things.com and http://www.goaltribe.com which is actually a good thing, it shows there is a need for this kind of application.<p>But today GoalTribe launched a facebook application that is very similar to my facebook application: http://apps.facebook.com/goaltribefitness<p>What do you suggest me to do?<p>1. Keep improving my application until I reach a better market fit than goaltribe?
2. Contact GoalTribe and find a partnership
3. Stop the project, the space is too crowded
4. Use some analytical method to decide
5. ??<p>As you can imagine, it is always a bit hard to discover a new competitor when you put some effort in your idea.<p>Thank you for your help.
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karthikm
I found go4it fb app to be the best facebook application with all features I
was looking for (and some more) and it was a lot better than 43things. I'd
recommend you to proceed and build your app till you are better than your
competition (if this is what you are really passionate about building). The
space is crowded and there are ~100 goal apps in fb. However, the best one
beat the rest by a clear mile and I didn't even have second thoughts about
using it. Note that I wouldn't use any other app right away for the following
reasons: 1\. go4it provides me all features I need. Some other tool should
provide me with awesome features that I would definitely want to use. 2\. I
wouldn't want to copy all my goals, timelines, progress and comments into a
different tool.

For new users these factors won't apply. When you reach a point where you are
better than the rest, provide screenshots (similar to yammer) of how
everything works in your application and what's better. In my case, I had to
install each app to try it and it was frustrating.

>> As you can imagine, it is always a bit hard to discover a new competitor
when you put some effort in your idea.

\- I can't really imagine this happening and I strongly disagree with this.
Now that you are spending so much effort on your app, its all the more
important for you to know what your existing and new competitors are doing.
Its similar to defending your hand if you are the big blind in poker.

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vabmit
Is this just a project? Or, is it a start-up?

If it's just a project, then it's probably just a hobby and you can make the
decision based on how much you enjoy your hobby.

If it's meant to be a start-up, then I think you need to focus on producing
some hard data on market size and potential revenue before you even start
thinking about the possibility that the space is too crowded. Whether or not
the market is too crowded depends not so much on what features you can offer
over your competitors' products, but on how much money you could potentially.
Can you compete in this market and cover your development and infrastructure
costs? Beyond that, do you think that you can eventually make enough profit
that the opportunity cost of pursuing this specific start-up is worth it?

Regarding revenue: What is your business model? Do you charge people for your
application? Do you count on advertising income? Is the application designed
in a way that generates revenue through virtual currency purchases or pay-per-
action? Have these revenues been growing in line with your user base?

Regarding market size: How many Facebook users do you think will eventually
use this type of application? How many of them do you think will use _your_
application? What percentage of invites to your application are accepted (are
conversions)? When you graph your new users and your conversion rate, are they
growing exponentially (like any tech start-up should be initially)? Or, it is
only growing at a slow increment, nearly flat, or declining? They graphs would
help you determine your overall growth and what percentage of total Facebook
users you may be able to convert. That would help you answer the most
important questions (those regarding financials).

If either the growth of your income or your user base are not growing
exponentially, I would suggest that you think about possible ways to increase
both to that level of growth and factor the amount of work required into your
decision.

If you're not able to make both your user base and your income grow
exponentially, I'd suggest you seriously consider pursuing a different start-
up idea. You may be able to achieve the creation of a lifestyle business (one
that would pay you a reasonable salary - $150K USD/yr) with just fast, but
non-exponential growth at this early stage. But, that would not be the kind of
life changing start-up that I, and many others on HN, are after.

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brk
IMO, if 2 or 3 options in a particular space/niche is "too crowded", then
you're looking at the wrong business in the first place.

