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Ask HN: We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do?

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Re: Ask HN: We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do?

#21

Post by iamyoohoo »

sganesh wrote: post #19

Things learned from building a best of class enterprise product and trying to beat out the competitors. We were the last entrant in the market. (i) List all completed features. - Guarantee these will work now & compare & contrast with your current competitors. Preferably give them a testing environment after the demo. (ii) List all features currently being developed. - Estimate when they will become available. Make s…

Thanks, very helpful.

However, the challenge is we haven't started a full blown cycle yet. So we really have only 1 "client" so far. This is in a space where customers are not very innovative which is where we come in.

Seems like we do have to start the customer development process.

Re: Ask HN: We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do?

#22

Post by danudey »

sganesh wrote: post #19

Things learned from building a best of class enterprise product and trying to beat out the competitors. We were the last entrant in the market. (i) List all completed features. - Guarantee these will work now & compare & contrast with your current competitors. Preferably give them a testing environment after the demo. (ii) List all features currently being developed. - Estimate when they will become available. Make s…

> So we hired sales people with expensive hobbies, and watched them work the magic.

In case anyone misses the reference, there was a post on HN a while back about why you want salespeople to have expensive hobbies. It basically boiled down to this:

Sales staff get paid more if they make more sales; people with expensive hobbies need to get paid more; sales staff with expensive hobbies need to make more sales to fund their lifestyles, and will thus be more driven to do so.

Re: Ask HN: We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do?

#23

Post by danudey »

It's rarely about being first to market. Apple didn't make the first MP3 player, Microsoft didn't make the first GUI, Google didn't make the first search engine. Stick with what you're doing; you can't be first, but you can be the best.

Personally, I would also keep in mind the 'competitor card'. 'Well, your competitor bought our competitor's version, and it's good, but if you go with us, you'll get these extra awesome features that'll help you get ahead of them' or whatever. Then again, that's a job for sales, not for development, and good sales people will know when to play it.

Re: Ask HN: We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do?

#24

Post by danudey »

joeld42 wrote: post #13

Learn from their mistakes. Look at the reactions from their customers, and make sure that you ship with their #1 wishlist feature and make sure that feature is emphasized. Also ... "They do not have all the pieces we have so our platform is far better" This is dangerous thinking. People generally prefer the most minimal product that actually solves their problem -- only established users want more features. If you ca…

Learn from their mistakes. Look at the reactions from their customers, and make sure that you ship with their #1 wishlist feature and make sure that feature is emphasized.

This is a good point to emphasize. Let someone else be first to market and make all the mistakes. Learn from their mistakes and respond faster than they can and you can capitalize on their first-to-market advantage.

People generally prefer the most minimal product that actually solves their problem -- only established users want more features.

I'm not entirely convinced of this. People will tend to buy things with more features because it has more features that they might someday want. The key is complexity. If it's simple to use despite those extra features (or because of them), then they're a benefit. If they make the product harder to use or slower, it's a drawback.

In Japan, the cell phone industry is the logical extreme of this. People cycle phones at ridiculous intervals to get more and better features, most of which don't work well or at all, and all of which make the phone more complicated to use. Yet still, it's a status symbol that you paid for a non-functional accelerometer that your friend doesn't have.

Re: Ask HN: We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do?

#25

Post by iamyoohoo »

danudey wrote: post #23

It's rarely about being first to market. Apple didn't make the first MP3 player, Microsoft didn't make the first GUI, Google didn't make the first search engine. Stick with what you're doing; you can't be first, but you can be the best. Personally, I would also keep in mind the 'competitor card'. 'Well, your competitor bought our competitor's version, and it's good, but if you go with us, you'll get these extra aweso…

Good point. Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do?

#26

Post by shafqat »

iamyoohoo wrote: post #6
jellisjapan wrote: post #2

How is their current marketing and recognition? It might be worth it to start up an early marketing strategy and at least out-market them before you actually can launch. I don't know about the retailers, but some of them may be willing to wait on purchasing a product if they knew something better was coming along later.

I think you are right - and we're leaning towards that. Just get the conversation going so we can get some traction since the sales cycle will most likely be 3 months at least. Our product will be production ready by then. My only worry is talking about products and someone really wants to go and we won't be able to right away.

If you think your sales cycle is 3 months, you should double that estimate. Sales cycles tend to be much longer than us optimistic entrepreneurs think. Just wanted to share our experience because knowing how long cycles really are would have helped us plan a lot better.
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