
Ask HN: What do you do if some other startup got funding for your exact idea? - vishalzone2002
We were working on an idea on the side. We also have an MVP. But the exact same idea got funding today from A list investors. I agree there are at least 2 sets of people working on same ideas but shall we keep going ?
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MalcolmDiggs
I'd say that it sounds like a bunch of A-list investors just co-signed and
approved your business plan. That'd be a clear signal to me to keep pushing
and turn the heat up! It's just validation; that other company isn't eating
your lunch yet. Unless you let them!

To put it another way: If you had zero well-funded competitors, you might have
to second-guess moving forward. This is the opposite; this is a great thing.
You just have to focus on becoming the Google to their Lycos.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Offtopic: Positive responses like this are why I come to HN. Excellent
response to OP.

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swalsh
I once listened to a talk from Alexis Ohanian about the founding of Reddit. He
tells a story about how they found out there was this big new site called digg
doing exactly the same thing their smaller site Reddit was doing.

They said cool, and kept on working.

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petercooper
I was listening to a podcast the other day where the presenter asked their
listeners if anyone _hadn 't_ heard of the ridiculously successful _Serial_
podcast - he was bombarded with responses!

Unless you're Microsoft or Google, there are _always_ audiences in your niche
who _haven 't even heard of the other guys_. I encounter this all the time in
my own business.

So unless your business was something specific like creating a scheduling
system for vetinary surgeons based in Utah, you've just had your business idea
partially validated and you still have a huge audience _who are not yet your
customers._ Be agile, outinnovate your competition, and use all the advantages
you have. There's room for both of you.

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lubujackson
Definitely keep going, even if they seem better than you. Sometimes a VC track
startup implodes fast while the turtle gets the prize. Things change quite a
bit over time, in my experience.

What you have gained is free market research. Since they have funding, they
are going to be fairly public about how they progress. Look at what they do,
consider why they did it and weigh the responses. DON'T shy away from things
that they are doing - if they had a great idea you didn't think of, TAKE IT.
If they have the same idea, don't change it, look at their results and see if
it can be improved. Otherwise, keep it the same.

You have the advantage of being reactive. Let them spend money and effort
validating, you can focus more on executing.

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shenoyroopesh
What does "same idea" mean?

\- Same problem being solved

\- Same solution to the problem being solved

\- Same solution to the problem with exactly same target audience and brand
positioning

etc..

I hope you see what I'm getting at.

You need to look at your target customers and see if they are going to
disappear - if no, then just keep working on the idea, and serve your
customers well. If the space is such that the customers will use both products
great. If you feel they are targeting the same segment and have already
started eating your customers (and you can't offer anything to them that will
take them away from that product), cut your losses and pivot - see whether you
can solve the same problem differently, more elegantly, or identify a
different target audience (for e.g. move from consumer market to Enterprise,
or target different geographies).

Think about it as a business - wanting to survive. Don't compete for
competitions sake - try to contribute the best you can. If someone else is
doing a much better job than you at something, take a step back and see
whether you can outdo them or it's easier to do something slightly
differently.

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uptown
Before Google there was Altavista.

Before WhatsApp there was ICQ.

Before Facebook there was MySpace.

First isn't always that important. Whatever your current vision is ... it's
likely to evolve in ways your competitor may view differently. It's rarely
about the original idea, but often way more about how you execute, and how
your idea evolves over the long-term.

~~~
bdcravens
_Before WhatsApp there was ICQ._

Pretty sure there were a few other IM platforms in that 15 year or so gap :-)

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rl3
I've had this happen twice with ideas I was actively pursuing. Both turned
into YC companies, both successful, the latter meteorically so.

How you should respond often is dependent on the situation. The hard part is
that the only person who is truly acquainted with the relevant facts is you
(and your co-founder, if you are so fortunate).

The first time, I was blindsided by the launch of a startup I should have
known existed. Despite doing tons of market research, it somehow flew under my
radar, and the result was that I ended up wasting months of my time.

In that case, deciding not to play catch up to a company with more traction,
funding and resources than I had, in a space with very little room for
differentiation, was probably the right call to make. It burned, but in
hindsight the decision to move on was almost certainly for the better.

Using that experience as a catalyst for the idea that followed, the second
time there would be no blindsiding. Instead, I became aware of the other
startup almost as soon as it came into existence. While not a threat
initially, I watched over the course of a year as it became more and more
similar to what I was working on, gaining incredible amounts of traction along
the way. It felt like my product was dying in slow motion before even being
born.

The only difference this time, was the particular space allowed for quite a
bit of differentiation. While that's a good thing, it also makes the questions
you have to ask yourself that much harder.

After agonizing for quite some time, I came to realize most of my fears were
irrational. Internalizing what it truly meant to have a _second mover
advantage_ helped tremendously on this front.

Now I think in terms of celebrating their success, and building off of it
every way I can (in an ethical manner). The more successful they are, the more
successful my product will be.

For anyone in a similar situation: chin up, don't torture yourself, and try to
build off of it in a positive way. It might have been that you were only in
competition with yourself.

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ffn
Depends on your idea and your plan of execution, I'd say.

If your idea is to build a social network or similar community thingy where
value is directly proportional to how many people use it and your monetizing
strategy is to get big enough to make money off of advertising, then you
should pivot your idea.

On the other hand, if your idea is to provide a service or product that has
value even if only 1 person ever use it (e.g. you file out people's tax forms
with 1 click of a button, you host adult fetish videos, you write funny
stories, you make ridiculous little wooden figurines of LoL / Dota characters,
you make low-calorie edible women's undergarments for men, etc.), then you
should keep at it.

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jastr
"If you give me an amazing idea, maybe I'll give you a dollar for it".

Good ideas are ubiquitous and are neither necessary nor sufficient for
building a successful company.

They have spent the last few months raising money, not building a product.
They will likely end up doing this again.

They now have a different incentives than you. Their investors will encourage
them to sacrifice short term growth for potential explosive growth (likely to
the detriment of the company).

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learnstats2
Yes, your idea is validated, like everyone said. So that's good. But there's
more...

Make sure your version of the idea is differentiated in a way that's not too
easy to reproduce.

You make a good version of your idea => they have more money => they clone
what you've done and market it more effectively => not a winner for you.

"Do it better than them" is the right idea, but they should be thinking the
same about you.

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evo_9
That's exactly what happened to me and I almost lost my house in bankruptcy
going to the limit trying to compete. Ignore the advice that your market is
validated - your market is gone is more the reality.

Cut your losses and move on. Seriously, there are plenty of other untapped
markets to try out, don't burn your bank accounts needlessly like I did. I
lost all my savings, my 401k and almost my house.

~~~
_random_
Don't want to rub it in, but I thought the rule #1 of modern start up is to
never bet your own money.

~~~
evo_9
A good rule for sure but also an easy rule to ignore because we always think
we are the exception, surely I will turn the corner on this business, I've
sunk a year+ into the code...

It's a lot harder to walk away than you might imagine.

~~~
ffn
Out of curiosity, what was your idea and why did it fail? Pls share your
wisdom.

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AngeloAnolin
As long as you don't see any hurdles/impediments (i.e. legal, copyright,
patents, etc) on your idea, then by all means keep pursuing it. Otherwise, it
may make more sense to move on to the executing on your next idea.

I'd also like to point out that keeping pursuit of your idea, you should
ensure that what you are offering would be at par or greater than the one
which got recently funded.

~~~
vishalzone2002
thanks for your answer. We do not infringe any IPs neither do they. My concern
is more about competing with someone funded while trying to bootstrap or pre-
funded.

~~~
adventured
If you've found a meaningful product category, you're going to spend a lot of
your existence competing with very well funded companies. Some will be well
funded startups, some might be massive corporations that can leverage vast
assets and an existing customer base. There is no escaping competition. You
have to build a better product; you have to treat your customers better; you
have to be more nimble than the big guy, move faster, execute better, provide
better attention to your customers due to your size.

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throwaway_x2
Going anonymous for that one...

I am in a similar situation. I am trying to bootstrap my startup, and someone
who has exactly the same idea got some funding - I don't know how much, I
would guess between $500k and 1M.

I spoke to the guy about two months before he got his funding, to see if we
could work together, and at the end I chose not to because it was clear to me
that he had no clue on how to build the product we both had in mind.

How did I react to the news of his funding? I personally took it well. I am
not too worried about competition given the size of our market, so it
validates my idea. And if things don't go well with my unfunded startup, I
will probably be able to get a job for him, so it becomes an insurance for me.

So, unless your product is in a very small niche, you shouldn't worry about
that. I don't recall his exact essay, but Paul Graham said that what kills
startups is not competition, but rather the lack dynamism to try and try new
ideas.

best of luck!

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dqdo
It depends on your market. Some ideas are winner take all (e.g., Google,
Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube) while other ideas can have multiple major market
players (e.g., Uber, Lyft, etc.). Depending upon your market, you may or may
not have to worry.

In my opinion, the best way to a successful start-up is to ensure that your
own economics works (cost of customer acquisition + cost of serving customer <
life time value of the customer). If your company can be profitable, it really
doesn't matter what your 'competitors' are doing. In fact, focusing too much
on your competitors can be a very bad thing.

If you idea falls into the camp of winner takes all, then you will need to
raise money to capture the market.

In reality, very few start-ups fall into winner take all and the fact that
there is funding in this space is a good thing. You don't ever want to work on
an idea that cannot be validated in the market.

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yumraj
First of all will agree with whatever has been said so far, that this is a
sort of validation that the idea is not totally bonkers. However the
validation at the moment is from investors, not customers - which is much more
important.

Also, you benefit from the second mover advantage in the sense that you get to
learn from them and also benefit from the market they create and improve upon
it.

However, one thing to note.. you said you're working on it "on the side",
while the other company just got some funding which not only implies that now
they have money but also that they were most likely already doing this
fulltime. So, if anything, you need to make a serious decision right now -
whether you want to drop it or pick it up fulltime. Most likely keeping on
doing it on the side is not going to cut it anymore since the race is now on..

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tlb
It depends why you want to start a company. If it's because "this product
needs to exist", you may have lost your motivation. If it's because "this
product is inevitable, and I believe I can do a better job than other people",
then keep at it.

~~~
vishalzone2002
thanks !! this is a very valid point. We started with "this product needs to
exists" though. I will probably post a comparison of ours to theirs on HN.

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api
On the plus side, think of it as a type of market validation. A bunch of
investors think your idea is solid.

On the minus side, try to avoid focusing too much on competing and not enough
on listening to the market directly and reasoning from first principles. It's
good to watch this competitor and learn from them, paying particular attention
to their weaknesses. But it's not good to fixate on them and direct your
attention to trying to "beat" the other guy instead of giving the market what
it wants. The market is your customer, not your competitor. It's also good to
try to do things a little bit differently so your product doesn't end up being
a mere imitation -- if you do that, you'll probably lose.

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benologist
The only people you should worry about are your customers who don't know you
exist, don't know someone else had a similar idea, and don't care that a small
group of people who are generally appalling at picking good companies chose
that one.

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bdcravens
Validation is cool. But there's a couple of questions you have to ask
yourself:

1) Do I need to go from an "idea on the side" to full-time? Pretty sure the
funded company has multiple full-time folks.

2) Is it possible to function without funding? This totally depends on your
business. If it's a SaaS app that can be funded by customer payments, you're
probably ok. If it's a consumer app that relies on network effect (marketing
spend), you may have issues.

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chiph
There's a bunch of VCs who will invest in a space, once another firm has made
the initial investment in a different startup. The bandwagon effect is real.
Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to contact those other VCs,
get funding, and ship a customer-pleasing product faster than the other guys.

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tzm
Cool, validation. But what type of validation? Market, team and/or product,
etc? Seems there's more to their offering than market and ideas. I'd be
looking deeper into why they are validated. Then I'd step on the gas pedal.

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brudgers
A list investors mostly fund companies that go bust by pushing to go big. They
grow massive or fail or become irrelevant. Odds are you and the people you
know use Facebook more than Myspace.

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thaumaturgy
Go out, go watch a movie or have dinner or hang out with friends or whatever.
Get some sleep. Then wake up tomorrow and keep doing what you were doing
anyway ... and do it better than them.

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ralphael
Thank them for market validation and get stuck into it. Lots of people have
ideas and then produce MVP's. But execution and level of funding will
determine who survives.

It's not a zero sum game.

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discardorama
It's not the idea itself, but the execution. Do you think Facebook was the
first social network? Or Google the first search engine? Or Reddit the first
social news site?

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AznHisoka
It's not even validation. A huge majority of funded companies fail. Just go
about your business. Investors, even A+ ones != paying customers.

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rafaqueque
Ship it. The idea is now valid and you can learn from their mistakes.

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aet
Think of Paypal and X.com -- how'd that work out?

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OceanPowers
think of competition as market validation.

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biomimic
They've validated your space. Learn from their mistakes. Hijack their customer
feedback. Do it better than them. Think of ways to partner with them. Keep
your enemies closer. Make it simpler than they do for the consumer or
enterprise. Yahoo, Excite, AllTheWeb, HotBot, Lycos etc were all search
engines before Google. Compuserve, Geocities, TheGlobe, Friendster and MySpace
were all essentially social networks before Facebook.

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Animats
This is why you want to get patents before spending time and money.

~~~
allendoerfer
Problem is, you have to spend time and money to get patents.

