Ask HN: Do you talk to your competitors?

#1

Post by lovekale » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:50 PM UTC

Early stage startup founder here. Do you generally talk to your competitors? Friends, enemy, or frenemy?

I've been building an app to reduce the noise in human conversations and recently I found a similar app that started a year before me. My instinct is to email the other founder and ask him "Hey how's it going? Can you share what you've learned with me?" but I wasn't sure if putting myself on their radar can be a good or bad idea?

Curious what the HN community think? What's your experience in your "relationship" with your competitive peers?

Re: Ask HN: Do you talk to your competitors?

#2

Post by mindcrime » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 7:59 PM UTC

I generally treat the whole thing as fairly neutral. I guess more of a "frenemy" at times. I don't go out of my way to antagonize competitors, and I'm happy to wish them well and cheer for them in general. Somebody, I think it was Steve Blank, once said (paraphrased slightly) "Startups don't die from competition with other startups, they die because they built a product nobody wants." I think that's pretty close to true.

All of this, of course, is regarding competitors who are startups. If we're talking Microsoft or Oracle or somebody... well... no comment.

Re: Ask HN: Do you talk to your competitors?

#3

Post by lovekale » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 8:04 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #2

I generally treat the whole thing as fairly neutral. I guess more of a "frenemy" at times. I don't go out of my way to antagonize competitors, and I'm happy to wish them well and cheer for them in general. Somebody, I think it was Steve Blank, once said (paraphrased slightly) "Startups don't die from competition with other startups, they die because they built a product nobody wants." I think that's pretty close to t…

OP here. You're spot on about the #1 killer of startups isn't competition, but product-market fit. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. Maybe "frenemy" is how I'll go about it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you talk to your competitors?

#4

Post by tjalfi » Tue, Mar 28, 2017, 8:21 PM UTC

The legal industry has ILTA for this (http://www.iltanet.org/about/about-ilta). Many law firms use the same technology stack and it is common to ask our peers for opinions on products or policies. The results are quite positive.