Ask HN: What do you do when you find out it's already been done?

[shinryuu]

So you've got an idea for a side project or something that you'd like to start. When you inevitable find out that it's already been done. Do you quit? Do you continue. How do you feel?

I usually feel discouraged. Should I? Should you stick with it, and try to put your mark on it.

[mindcrime]

Just do it better.

Edit: actually, that's a little too glib. Let me say this instead "just do it different". And that's actually not a glib answer, because I mean something very specific by that. In almost every market, there are always multiple vectors along which you can differentiate your offering. To grossly over-simplify, you could optimize on "price", "quality", "customer intimacy", etc.

For example: if there's a company out there offering something like your thing, but offering it very cheap, then don't try to be the "low bid" vendor. Instead, become the "boutique" or "luxury" vendor that sells to customers who want white-glove service and are willing to pay for it. OR, do the opposite... if your erstwhile competitor has what appears to be very high prices, see if you can build your thing in such a way that you can sell it much more cheaply. Note that in either of these cases, your not necessarily competing for the same set of customers! There may be some overlap, but there are always customer who want "the cheapest", or customers who want "the best", or customers who want the whole "white glove treatment" thing, etc.

Also, as an aside, be wary of trying to compete for "lowest price" as this can lead to a "race to the bottom" situation and make it very hard to maintain any kind of margin. If you want to lower prices, do it by finding a way to operate more efficiently, instead of just sacrificing margin, if at all possible.

There are a few variations on this theme, and you could argue there are a lot of variations depending on how fine-grained you get in terms of how you segment those "vectors of differentiation". To learn more about this overall concept, I highly recommend reading The Discipline of Market Leaders by by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema.

[shinryuu → mindcrime]

Thank you for this! I'll definitely take a look at the book you recommended. The product in question is B2C, and I'm thinking that perhaps it might be possible to offer as a B2B instead. I'm going to email a couple of businesses and see if I get any positive response.

[troydavis]

I think that depends why you didn’t know about the existing solution when you started. Is it because the existing solution has a major flaw or gap (mediocre product, no awareness among its market/users, under or over capitalized, solves a related problem but not yours, etc.) or is it simply because you didn’t know anything about the field?

If it’s the former, the problem hasn’t been solved. Keep going.

If it’s the latter (and as a customer, you’d have used the existing solution if you’d known about it when you started), reconsider.

[jascii]

If someone else is already successfully doing it, means there clearly is a need/market for what you plan on doing. Now talk to some of their customers and figure out how you can do it better!