Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 84 posts

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#71

Post by tptacek »

You should launch anyways.

In 2004, I was going to do a startup with some friends that would ship a product allowing enterprises to "firewall" the IM protocols, ensuring that private inter-company messages stayed inside the company's 4 walls. We gave up when 3 other companies launched products to do the same thing, including AOL, all well-financed.

Companies launched after we decided we were outgunned ended up doing better than the companies that were there at the beginning. AOL dropped their product entirely.

Every time a friend of mine has built a product in a space that seemed spoken for, they've done well. Look at Marty Roesch with SourceFire; nobody would have predicted green fields for SourceFire when they launched, but Marty and his team IPO'd.

The single toughest part about getting a company off the ground is product/market fit. It's finding the right group of people to talk to and having the right conversations to figure out what the feature/function/benefit should be, how the product should be packaged, and what it should cost. Think of it this way: someone else did the hardest part of the problem for you.

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#73

Post by jarin »

TWSS wrote: post #40
lallysingh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you can take risks that they may be unwilling to take. You don't have group-think to worry about. You can use tools & languages that it's too hard to hire for. As this is a PG site, consider functional systems. I'm a huge haskell fan myself, and holy crap is it faster to develop in, especially early on. In terms of productivity, it can be 10-15x. It's proven as such in my own work. How many devs do they have? L…

This is great advice for me to hear, as I'm in a similar position right now. I've been considering obliquely slamming our competitor in a blog post, but I've held off because I don't want us to come off like dicks. Wouldn't I be better off focusing the messaging on how we're doing it right, rather than how they're doing it wrong?

I wouldn't go TOO crazy badmouthing competitors, as you may end up joining forces later on (through acquisition or partnerships).

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#74

Post by peteforde »

The Wright Brothers were up against all sorts of commercial and even military competition. Everyone was throwing huge amounts of money and resources at the problem. The Wrights were perceived as amateur-hour kooks playing with toys in a field. The military was downright rude when describing how their success was a forgone conclusion and that the Wrights weren't worth paying attention to.

The other point is that while orgs like Amazon, eBay, PayPal and Craigslist ran with their first mover advantage, lots of other first-movers totally dropped the ball. See Friendster/Facebook for my favourite example. LiveJournal/WordPress/Tumblr is another set of hard lessons.

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#75

Post by TWSS »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #67
TWSS wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great advice for me to hear, as I'm in a similar position right now. I've been considering obliquely slamming our competitor in a blog post, but I've held off because I don't want us to come off like dicks. Wouldn't I be better off focusing the messaging on how we're doing it right, rather than how they're doing it wrong?

Publicly slagging off competitors by name seems to backfire more often than not, unless you're Steve Jobs. However you can talk about all the ways that X is done wrong without actually mentioning by name the competitors who are doing X wrong. Clearly explain the problems you see in 'the industry' and your solutions to them, but not the other people/companies involved.

Thanks for the advice - it's pretty much what I ended up doing. Snarky enough to be satisfying, but I buried the diss so it wasn't too blatant. :^)

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#76

Post by [deleted] »

jarin wrote: post #73
TWSS wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great advice for me to hear, as I'm in a similar position right now. I've been considering obliquely slamming our competitor in a blog post, but I've held off because I don't want us to come off like dicks. Wouldn't I be better off focusing the messaging on how we're doing it right, rather than how they're doing it wrong?

I wouldn't go TOO crazy badmouthing competitors, as you may end up joining forces later on (through acquisition or partnerships).

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#77

Post by Joakal »

jarin wrote: post #73
TWSS wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great advice for me to hear, as I'm in a similar position right now. I've been considering obliquely slamming our competitor in a blog post, but I've held off because I don't want us to come off like dicks. Wouldn't I be better off focusing the messaging on how we're doing it right, rather than how they're doing it wrong?

I wouldn't go TOO crazy badmouthing competitors, as you may end up joining forces later on (through acquisition or partnerships).

Didn't stop OkCupid. In fact, they did take down the bad parts. Probably part of the acquisition motivation is that the competitor didn't want the bad facts to be available.

However, you should understand that they could do the same to you. In that case, have class and say "Thanks for the advice, ! 'Unfortunately we believe that's not the best direction'/'The users will appreciate it'"

Post reply on HN