I've been building Jive Search. There's already tons of competitors in search (Google, Bing, etc.). There's also DuckDuckGo, StartPage, etc. that claim to be privacy-focused but are just as opaque as Google. The niche I'm targeting is users that understand that for true privacy in search you have to be transparent and open source so that users can view the code and run it on their own if they want.
Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
41–50 of 301 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
#42It depends on the size of the total addressable market. If the size of your target market is big, even if there are bigger established players, there is always a chance for a small, nimble product to carve out a niche. Established players often head upmarket (especially if they are VC funded). This often gives an opening for a new entrant to capture some of the SMB market share. An example closer to me: the search en…
Interesting idea. How's it going so far? Do you have any customers?
Started this as an open source project with the goal of first creating an ecosystem. So far, I have been getting good reviews from people who are using it as a search solution.
Eventually, there will be certain premium features that maybe only 10% of people will really want, and I will charge for that. Playing the long game here.
Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
#43I've long been baffled as to why what I'm building doesn't already exist. Sure it's tough to actually design-and-make, but it's basically a holy grail of computing that a ton of people have, I think, generally wanted since long before I was born. The weird thing is that I often do find people working on similar things. Sometimes they're historical projects I'll find a Wikipedia article on, or sometimes they're posted…
> Intentional system
I want to build the same thing. It seems hard so i haven't started working on it.
Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
#44When I started thinking about home security - Comcast & companies like Arlo came existence. But, they are not good enough from customer standpoint. Lots of opportunities still exist for disruption - when we think from end customer standpoint.
Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
#45It depends on the size of the total addressable market. If the size of your target market is big, even if there are bigger established players, there is always a chance for a small, nimble product to carve out a niche. Established players often head upmarket (especially if they are VC funded). This often gives an opening for a new entrant to capture some of the SMB market share. An example closer to me: the search en…
I'm one of the people who'd definitely use an alternative to ElasticSearch! I hate the fact that elastic search is using Java. It just takes up too much memory.
Great, I would love to hear your feedback on Typesense then. It's not meant to be a full-blown ES replacement. Elasticsearch is a beast but most people don't need that (atleast to begin with).
Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
#46First question: are you rich? Because you're going to have to buy market share.
Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
#47I think it makes a difference whether you're looking for ideas that will do well, vs just having an idea that you would go for as a pet project. I have one of those "just a pet project" ideas which I have been developing for no reason other than my own benefit, and let me tell you, I love finding competition. It's like Christmas every time I find out there's a service that incorporates some of the concepts, and I keep a big document of inspiration that draws between all of them.
If your idea isn't unique, you can still succeed, but you have to out-do the competition on something other than uniqueness.
Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
#48A while ago, I was in the same boat. Why try to recreate GitHub, or Uber, or Salesforce, or Facebook? And once I discovered any competitors in my idea's field, I would chalk it down to "not worth trying" and call it a day. But then I realized, if my town can have 3-4 Chinese restaurants with the same exact menus (probably supplied by the same exact distributors), and they've all operated continuously for over a decad…
I don't think this is a super helpful comparison.
There is a net demand for Chinese food in the area, and there will definitely be such a thing as 'too much or little' supply (though obviously each offer i.e. supply is a little different)
A single restaurant will only be able to meet so much demand, so if there's a niche in terms of region or menu, maybe there's a real opportunity.
GitHub, Uber, FB - they all have network externalizations to some extent, there definitely have economies of scale, and they are playing in a global marketplace (or at least, say 'the Western world').
So, no, it's probably not a good idea to compete directly with them.
In fact, incumbents almost always win - the idea is to do something different enough, solve a problem in a different way.
Slack did not build 'better email' they went up one level and built 'better communication'. And a whole bunch of other things of course. But 'slack e-mail' probably would not have yielded them the same result.
Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
#49I gave up trying to invent something unique (because trying too hard tells you that you are failing), but I constantly contemplate on ideas to make something that already exists better. There are many things that are already great, but some weird or restrictive design decisions are making it impossible for me to accept their 'greatness'. Take the G5 Power Mac, for instance. At the time it really was one of the greatest products Apple ever conceived. But then came some weird design decisions, partly due to IBM's inability to provide more efficient chip designs and it all went to hell. Coolant leakage, overheating, insane power consumption. Since then I've been trying to come up with ideas to make the Power Mac design a thing again, but with another system inside.
Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're making a really good insight here. I just wanna give some examples to add to your point. Here in Indonesia there are 2 big Uber clone (at least initially): Gojek and Grab that are both unicorn. In the beginning, they both started off ride-hailing. But after about 4 years, Gojek morphed into a payment company like Chinese We-Pay. It seems they were thinking of ride-hailing as a good customer-acquisition strateg…
Just do expand a bit further on Grab, they added food delivery and parcel courier services recently, as well as transport subscription services (for around $40 you get 35 car rides a month, for example).
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