Man but it's so hard to stop thinking. People said to build an MVP. I did. Comparing it with competitors, it looks empty. It gets the job done but what about other 107 integrations with third-party APIs my competitors provide? Even if I show it to my potential customers, it feels like cheating. I feel like if they know about my competitors they're bound to leave my software for sure. This sucks, even more, when you are a solo developer. If I start chasing every feature competitors have it's gonna take me a decade to build. Man but I've put so much work already I don't want to give up too. It's a tiring mental dilemma.
“Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
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Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#72You have no idea how relevant this is to me at exactly this moment! About an hour ago, I found out that a competitor (a larger incumbent player) released a feature today that I had built and released 6 months ago! I've been panicking the last couple of hours, but now it's back to the grind. I've got a lot more feature ideas in mind, and this is just that extra push to do the things I've been putting off.
If both you and a competitor could build a feature, then it was a feature that was going to be built anyway. The art is to position and brand yourself in a way that allows you to build unique features that wouldn't be useful to a competitor because you are attacking different market segments.
If you can't position, then you become a commodity and you're competing purely on price.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#73Man but it's so hard to stop thinking. People said to build an MVP. I did. Comparing it with competitors, it looks empty. It gets the job done but what about other 107 integrations with third-party APIs my competitors provide? Even if I show it to my potential customers, it feels like cheating. I feel like if they know about my competitors they're bound to leave my software for sure. This sucks, even more, when you a…
The key is to build a Minimal Viable Product. If your product is just a crappier version of someone else's product, then it's not viable. Focus solving a specific hair on fire problem that some subset of your user base has that they're willing to adopt your product, even if every other aspect of it is inferior. This gives you the oxygen to play catch up on other aspects.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#74Man but it's so hard to stop thinking. People said to build an MVP. I did. Comparing it with competitors, it looks empty. It gets the job done but what about other 107 integrations with third-party APIs my competitors provide? Even if I show it to my potential customers, it feels like cheating. I feel like if they know about my competitors they're bound to leave my software for sure. This sucks, even more, when you a…
Nobody needs those 107 integrations. Everyone just needs two or three. Having 107 makes it more likely that you happen to have the 2 or 3 integrations that one specific customer needs.
As a solo dev, you can't be all things to everyone. You need to focus.
And if you focus on a subset of your customers, you may be able to do the two or three things your customers need better than the big guy who can do 107 things. And that's how you sell your product.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#75You have no idea how relevant this is to me at exactly this moment! About an hour ago, I found out that a competitor (a larger incumbent player) released a feature today that I had built and released 6 months ago! I've been panicking the last couple of hours, but now it's back to the grind. I've got a lot more feature ideas in mind, and this is just that extra push to do the things I've been putting off.
If both you and a competitor could build a feature, then it was a feature that was going to be built anyway. The art is to position and brand yourself in a way that allows you to build unique features that wouldn't be useful to a competitor because you are attacking different market segments. If you can't position, then you become a commodity and you're competing purely on price.
This is true, and a useful book on positioning is: https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/00...
Furthermore, one way to avoid ending up in a feature for feature fight to the death with a bigger player is to think instead in terms of “job to be done”: https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done
By planning what you work on by focusing on what the customer is trying to achieve you’ll do yourself a favour when it comes to marketing as you’ll be able to speak in terms they understand.
Lastly, as you’ll see in the positioning book above, it’s not wise to completely avoid competitor analysis despite how unpleasant and draining it can sometimes be. A potential customer needs to understand why they would choose you over the incumbent. You need to know that answer before they can.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#76Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#77Agree with PG. I mean I'd love to have the free time to be able sit analyze and strategize against what my competitors are doing, but I'm too busy working on the next place which I believe will add the most value. In the end you'll end up with a different priority/feature-set and USPs that focusing and trying to replicate what your competitors are doing. IMO the most important thing is to have a solid Customer base,…
Yes both users ideas and self generated USP's are important. But since mostly everything can be copied, doesn't it make sense to build a defensible strategy , building things your competitors will find hard to copy ? And doesn't looking at competitors helps with that?
This.
No one should take PG's quip to be anything more than advice for those who are running a dysfunctional ship due to excessive obsession with competitors.
There are likely two broad ways any business gets off the ground:
(1) Unintentionally (2) Intentionally
Google was likely unintentional (Brin and Page weren't attempting to create a business for their dissertation).
Amazon was quite clearly intentional.
Most startups are likely in (2).
VC-backed startups and startups hoping to obtain VC funding have a goal of gaining some amount of strong traction (thus increasing the likelihood of fast and significant growth).
If you're intentional, and you have a goal of obtaining the traction that's attractive in the VC universe, then competitive strategy is not something you can ignore. It's not something you myopically focus on, but it will help guide your positioning and development (among other things).
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#78Man but it's so hard to stop thinking. People said to build an MVP. I did. Comparing it with competitors, it looks empty. It gets the job done but what about other 107 integrations with third-party APIs my competitors provide? Even if I show it to my potential customers, it feels like cheating. I feel like if they know about my competitors they're bound to leave my software for sure. This sucks, even more, when you a…
I've build Tagly/Handlr as a knowledge base for a company ( MVP as they say - http://handlr.sapico.me ), they went for SharePoint. After 2 years it's back on the table. And I've been dogfooding it ever since.
The only thing is performance. But for it's porpose, it's perfect.
A lot of things have more features, but I've build it as a managable HN with hierarchical tags. Which is kinda unique.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#79Man but it's so hard to stop thinking. People said to build an MVP. I did. Comparing it with competitors, it looks empty. It gets the job done but what about other 107 integrations with third-party APIs my competitors provide? Even if I show it to my potential customers, it feels like cheating. I feel like if they know about my competitors they're bound to leave my software for sure. This sucks, even more, when you a…
> I feel like if they know about my competitors they're bound to leave my software for sure
Who gives you the right to decide what a customer should want? If they are with you and they are happy with your solution and they stay with you, it's not in your right to think that they should be buying it from someone else.
This is why we don't have one car model for each car category, one kind of food for each meal. It may seem logical that everybody should just buy the product with the most bang for their bucks but people usually need the right product.
Sporks are more feature rich than spoons and forks but most people would prefer to use spoons for the soup and forks for the salad even when they are fully aware that sporks exist.
if everyone is leaving you when they learn about your competitor it may mean that you don't have a viable product and you should make changes.
Re: “Every minute I spent thinking about competitors was a minute wasted”
#80Totally agree with PG on this. This isn’t the first time he says this obviously and has put a lot of thought into this. The quote I really like from him on this topic is: “A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.” I like to remind my two friends helping me build our side project right now of this reality all the time. There are so many…
Link to mentioned quote: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/398642023529345024?lang=en (7 Nov 2013)
https://i.imgur.com/1PmAL1K.png
What's wrong when a grown man says something like that? Are phthalates to blame?