Go for it. One of the projects I am working on is Yet Another Photo-sharing Site. Here in SF the first thing people ask is "Why? Why not just use Flickr?"
But when I leave SF, I tell people "I am making a photo sharing site, kind of like Flickr, but how I want it." The response I get is "Sounds Cool - what is Flickr?"
Sites like Fotolog and Photo.net and Photobucket eventually sold for way more than Flickr.
The point I'm trying to make is that if the market is big enough, there will be people who want to use your product, even if there is an entrenched competitor. In fact, your competitor may not be as entrenched as you think.
I stand corrected. Since I once actually got a job through photo.net's classifieds (back in the Ars Digita days) I'm glad to see it. The comments there however (the mention of debt, "terms were not disclosed") suggest it wasn't a terribly lucrative exit.
Hey man. I didn't mean to discourage you. I just don't want to see you wasting your precious development time. The most precious thing to a developer is his time. So I don't want to see another developer spending a lot of effort on his baby and yet it doesn't gain traction. I would rather the developer devote his time to some project that is different and have a better chance of succeeding.
if your photo app is going to bring something radically different to the table, then i say 'bring it on'
This is more to scratch my own itch. The online photo situation is so huge that there might even be a few, or many other people who like what I've built. If so, great. If not - I don't care, I built something I wanted to build. It isn't going to be radically different, just "sort of" different. Hopefully fun, too.
Sometimes I think hacker attitudes are way too dramatic. "Precious development time", "... my baby." Discouraging projects unless they are "radically different." Commit 100% or don't bother! Utmost passion and dedication to your online power saving widget! GO BIG OR GO HOME!
A lot of really good software was created on a lark. Some of it even became financially successful. It doesn't need to be quit your job and drop out of school to make the next Google (using Haskell, this time) or else you're wasting your time.
That said, at my day job I have genetically engineered biomolecules to act as a massively parallel neural network which can design new derivative investment instruments on the fly and corner the market on them before other hedge funds even know they exist. As a clever side-effect, this process unearths retrotransposon based cures for AIDS hidden in "junk DNA". My work has been "certified green" because the biological residue from the computations can be dumped onto ocean oil spills and automatically transform the petroleum into vegan friendly biodiesel which swims to shore on its own. I have also hacked my roomba to perform an advanced form of lasik surgery which restores sight and plan on sending it on a world tour to communities in the rain forest afflicted with "river blindness." Hopefully these advances in the state of the art more than make up for the time I'm wasting on my boring photo site.
EDIT: gotta give a shout out to my homies at CERN for hooking one of my molecules up with a free trip to the 11th dimension after they find the higgs. thanks, guys!
"What would you do? Would you just support him blindly or would you advise him to do something else?"
Regardless of the idea, I would advise setting a squeal point in advance, a condition such as [cash < $20k] that will immediately trigger the action of giving up and looking for a job.
Aside from that caveat, I would give much the same advice as others have given here: focus on the needs of your users, keep your burn rate low, and code like a madman.
Common advice for new Go players is "lose your first 100 games as quickly as possible." Players who follow this advice invariably win their first game long before playing 100 games.
Fair enough. You made your point and it's a valid one.
But my observation is that it is very hard to beat the competition unless your product offers something compelling over theirs. Not impossible, but hard.
P.S. Chill out guys. It's not like as if i told menlopark to scrap his idea. I told him to change his game plan. To differentiate his product from the competition like what Fotonauts did.
One of YCombinator's "Startup ideas we'd like to fund" was "9. Photo/video sharing services." So there's somebody else out there that doesn't think Flickr/Photobucket/FaceBook is the last word in photo-sharing.
"...but how I want it" are powerful words. If existing products don't do what you want, and you can find a way to make them do what you want without a huge team and lots of $$, why not?
Like i said, if his app brings something different to the table like Fotonauts, bring it on (read my first post: I said change the game plan only if it offers nothing different over the existing services. I didn't say forget about the idea).
It's just that I've seen too many startups doing photo-sharing sites (admit it. You've seen your fair share of them) promising something different but in the end, they offer nothing compelling over the current services.
It's like someone saying they want to build a craigslist killer because of all sort of cool features that they can't do with craigslist. And when they launch it, yeah they're right. There are some cool features that they can't do with craigslist like advanced filtering but these are not compelling enough to differentiate themselves.
Fotonauts will appeal very much to the wikipedia crowd.
Like wikipedia, I expect a small minority being responsible in generating most of the content.
In no time, Fotonauts will start attracting the masses in being a reference photo site. Eg. if I want to know more about tattoos, I won't go to Flickr. I just get pictures of tattoos at Flickr. At Fotonauts, I'll get to see the photos and relevant content about tattoos.
But when I leave SF, I tell people "I am making a photo sharing site, kind of like Flickr, but how I want it." The response I get is "Sounds Cool - what is Flickr?"
Sites like Fotolog and Photo.net and Photobucket eventually sold for way more than Flickr.
The point I'm trying to make is that if the market is big enough, there will be people who want to use your product, even if there is an entrenched competitor. In fact, your competitor may not be as entrenched as you think.