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Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#231

Post by protomyth »

alexobenauer wrote: post #38

Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question (it's a common one!): You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info, and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that excitement and ideation…

Let your mind fester on the idea, allow it to grow like many branches from a trunk. Jot down all of the tangentially related but equally exciting ideas that inevitably follow

I recently bought a Sony Voice Recorder just for talking about the wild ideas. Its amazing how much I was self-editing when jotting notes. Training yourself just to blather into a recorder (I don't use my phone because it felt weird) and then using some text to speech to extract the words later has really been a better workflow for me to get the fleeting thoughts out of my poor memory and into something I can continue to churn.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#232

Post by bsirkia »

Iv wrote: post #148
alexobenauer wrote: post #38

Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question (it's a common one!): You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info, and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that excitement and ideation…

I had a very enlightening talk with a sales manager at the first company I worked for. We were pioneering some augmented reality applications and really had a few worlds first. As an engineer, I had thought that guaranteed us a market. That guy explained to me that quite the opposite, that forced us to "create" the market. A thing that is like exploring a jungle with a machete, whereas marketing an existing product i…

This really resonates with me as an engineer/CTO working on a product that went into the jungle with a machete. We never anticipated how difficult it would be educate the market, so eventually pivoted to more of a "toll-road" product.

There's really a second/third/fourth mover advantage that often isn't talked about, which is that you don't have to explain the entire point of your product before convincing them that your pricing makes sense and it's worth their time. When clear competitors exist, the sale is just why your specific solution is superior (more efficient, smarter features tacked on, cheaper pricing etc.)

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#233

Post by JudgeWapner »

Const-me wrote: post #224
jdormit wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SSL is useless for static content This is just... false. Without SSL, static content can be MITM'd just like anything else. Don't believe me? Connect to the WiFi in any Starbucks and visit http://example.com . That redirect to the Starbucks WiFi login page certainly isn't being served from example.com... Please stop spreading misinformation about SSL.

> Connect to the WiFi in any Starbucks Need to cross national borders for that, more than once. > That redirect to the Starbucks WiFi login page certainly isn't being served from example.com Also saw these things here in a couple of places. Most places here don’t charge for WiFi and have a single PSK key for all clients, but couple indeed ask for authentication this way. I’m not sure how SSL helps? As a user, I don’t…

completely ignoring privacy. ISP's "collect" (read: eavesdrop) on all data they can get their hands on.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#234

Post by __m »

alexobenauer wrote: post #38

Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question (it's a common one!): You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info, and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that excitement and ideation…

I think looking at other solutions won’t limit your creativity when you are conscious about this potential framing. It might even give you a new perspective, a requirement that you neglected, it could have a synergetic effect. Just like a todo list might constrain you to thinking about lists if you don’t question every assumption you make. I really like the book „thoughtful interaction design“ by Jonas Löwgren

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#235

Post by Const-me »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #233
Const-me wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Connect to the WiFi in any Starbucks Need to cross national borders for that, more than once. > That redirect to the Starbucks WiFi login page certainly isn't being served from example.com Also saw these things here in a couple of places. Most places here don’t charge for WiFi and have a single PSK key for all clients, but couple indeed ask for authentication this way. I’m not sure how SSL helps? As a user, I don’t…

completely ignoring privacy. ISP's "collect" (read: eavesdrop) on all data they can get their hands on.

ISPs know IP addresses anyway, even with HTTPS. Same with DNS names.

SSL makes a lot of sense on web sites like facebook and youtube: users enter sensitive data there, servers serve terabytes of available content, not all of which is public, and even for public, the user’s selection is privacy-sensitive.

For a small static web sites, any person in the world can get their hands on all the content, that’s the whole point of public Internet. There’s no privacy-sensitive data in HTTP traffic to these sites, unless there’s google analytics, ads, or some other malware on that site.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#236

Post by tenaciousDaniel »

I've developed a few ideas that I would love to work on, but I'm extremely pessimistic about business ventures. If anything remotely similar to my idea exists, I assume that they've considered my idea and there's something I'm missing. Like there's some reason it wouldn't work the way I'm imagining, and I'd fail.

So yeah, I tend to quit unless the idea is super unique.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#237

Post by JohnFen »

> For you builders/founders out there, are you on a never ending quest to find something new/unique or do you prefer another quality in your idea to start a project?

I take on projects (both commercial and hobby) that satisfy a need that isn't already being adequately addressed elsewhere.

I don't care much if a product of the same sort already exists. I only care that it isn't adequately meeting a need.

In fact, if I've come up with an idea and find that nothing like it already exists, I consider that a red flag. Not a showstopper, but a reason to be much more cautious. This is because it often happens that if nobody else is addressing a given market, it's because there's some serious problem in addressing that market that I haven't foreseen (perhaps it isn't as big as I think, or there is some technical gotcha that I didn't notice, etc.)

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#238

Post by ehnto »

Const-me wrote: post #224
jdormit wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SSL is useless for static content This is just... false. Without SSL, static content can be MITM'd just like anything else. Don't believe me? Connect to the WiFi in any Starbucks and visit http://example.com . That redirect to the Starbucks WiFi login page certainly isn't being served from example.com... Please stop spreading misinformation about SSL.

> Connect to the WiFi in any Starbucks Need to cross national borders for that, more than once. > That redirect to the Starbucks WiFi login page certainly isn't being served from example.com Also saw these things here in a couple of places. Most places here don’t charge for WiFi and have a single PSK key for all clients, but couple indeed ask for authentication this way. I’m not sure how SSL helps? As a user, I don’t…

If your site is vulnerable to a MITM attack you are not protecting your users and someone can serve them anything. The security risk isn't people reading your blog in flight, it is people injecting your blog with malicious scripts that can compromise your users.

Would you be happy if when I visited your website I was asked for my credit card details through a phishing scam? Not secure for me, not a good look for your site.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#239

Post by JohnFen »

Iv wrote: post #148
alexobenauer wrote: post #38

Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question (it's a common one!): You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info, and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that excitement and ideation…

I had a very enlightening talk with a sales manager at the first company I worked for. We were pioneering some augmented reality applications and really had a few worlds first. As an engineer, I had thought that guaranteed us a market. That guy explained to me that quite the opposite, that forced us to "create" the market. A thing that is like exploring a jungle with a machete, whereas marketing an existing product i…

> That guy explained to me that quite the opposite, that forced us to "create" the market.

Indeed.

That's the underlying reason for the hoary old truism that "the pioneers get all the arrows". In terms of business, you really don't want to be first to market. You want to be second or third, so you can learn from all the first's mistakes, and benefit from the market-building that the pioneers engaged in.

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