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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?

#281

Post by blacksoil »

youngtaff wrote: post #196
blacksoil wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's "exactly the same thing", I personally wouldn't do it. It doesn't have to be something so significantly different, but it has to be a solution to some real pain points that persist on the existing solution. On his book "From 0 to 1", Peter Thiel goes even more extreme. For him, if something isn't 10x better then the alternative solution, he wouldn't do it. Of course, all the above doesn't apply if your goal o…

But isn't Peter Thiel's view on what's a worthwhile return on investment different to most of us (who I expect would be happy just making a decent living)

That's true. His perspective is more of VCs than us.

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

#282

Post by signalsmith »

Const-me wrote: post #219
mijoharas wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Increases entry barrier, centralizing internet even more. For-profit internet companies have zero issues paying for certificates, it’s part of their business. It raises barrier for ordinary people. Also creates more incentive for placing ads on their web sites to reduce costs. Guess who earns most profits from internet ads? Lets encrypt is one obvious thing to mention here, besides removing the cost barrier to entr…

> it really is quite simple to set up I haven’t tried but I think it’s only simple is you’re willing to manually renew every 90 days. I’m not willing to. Automatic renewals are only simple for popular environments like LAMP, my web server runs Windows server with IIS and old school asp.net. I can run arbitrary native code on that server, but I don’t have GUI access to that machine. But even if it would be super-easy…

> [...] manually renew every 90 days

That's the opposite of the design goals - Let's Encrypt is designed to be automatable.

They set the expiry to 90 days precisely because they want you to automate the renewal.

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

#283

Post by Ozzie_osman »

Zoom is not a typical example. In this case the founder already knew the space and product really well. Eric Yuan was VP for webex at Cisco and hence already knew the market, had the contacts, and understood what was holding webex back as a product.

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

#284

Post by lowii »

nexuist wrote: post #16

A 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…

There's a big difference between apps and restaurants. One chinese restaurant can only serve so many customers, but one well made website can serve the entire market, making other solutions of lesser quality almost worthless.

That being said, I agree with the point of your comment in general, and we shouldn't stop ourselves from creating something we value just because it exists already. Working on something we care about gives meaning to our life, and who knows, maybe your solution will turn out to be the best one out there.

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

#285

Post by nojvek »

nexuist wrote: post #16

A 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…

> If you're brave enough to start, you may just be brave enough to win.

I love this quote. Thank you. Gonna ponder about this for the rest of my day.

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

#286

Post by anchpop »

pkghost wrote: post #153
sheetjs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth noting the downside of scale: some opportunities are "too small" for a Microsoft or Google to pursue. Google revenue for 2018 was $136.8B. Extra effort to possibly address a small niche segment of a market, that would improve revenue by $1M per year, is too small to draw anyone's attention. However, that same $1M/yr is enough to sustain a bootstrapped business and even possibly build the credibility to rai…

> $1M per year, is too small to draw anyone's attention. I'll take this opportunity to tell a long-winded story about how that number can be two orders of magnitude larger, and still be too small. I was with Slide when Google bought us in 2010. They bungled the acquisition (bought us to work on Google+, which had already made a bunch of disagreeable decisions by the time we were ready to rumble), so we were left to o…

I remember looking at photovine when it came out. I was only 11 but I thought it was a brilliant idea. And it was so much more colorful than any other Google apps I'd used at the time.

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

#287

Post by sonnyblarney »

vsk wrote: post #161
sonnyblarney wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

Google won against Yahoo and Altavista, Facebook won against MySpace, StackOverflow against ExpertsExchange. One thing that the losers have in common is that their execution was not good enough (or outright bad in the case of ExpertsExchange). But Altavista was huge when Google started. AOL had network effects that did not help them, so it is absolutely not clear that it is impossible. People however are more letharg…

Alta Vista was tiny when Google beat them.

Google had the entire internet inedexed and was running their engine from Standford with just a few machines.

The internet was tiny back in 1997.

In 1997 there was 1 million web sites.

Today there are 2 billion.

[1] https://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/

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

#288

Post by alexobenauer »

avichalp wrote: post #279
alexobenauer wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are my favorite problems - the ones people hate but seem resigned to living with; almost as if it's a simple fact of life. When you come in with a solution, they'll be skeptical at first, but you'll know quickly whether or not you're on a great solution for them.

Do you suggest asking people directly what are there most pressing problems helps? Or do you think it is better to observe people struggling with something and then propose a solution and have them evaluate it.

I personally employ a balance of both.

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

#289

Post by bonestamp2 »

woutr_be wrote: post #14
bonestamp2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's already another website that does exactly the same thing I don't think there's anything wrong with this per se, but you still need something to set yours apart. For example, if the features are identical, then the price can be different. If the price is the same, then you can edge them out with features or service or get ready, experience. Amazon won us over with price, but now there are often other places…

I understand that, I also compare services / products and make a decision, even if one is a copy of the other, I generally don't really care about it. (Unless it's just a 1-to-1 knockoff) But somehow with the products I work on, being seen as a knockoff is constantly on my mind.

Fair enough, but keep in mind that Oreo cookies are a knockoff. But nobody thinks of them that way because they're the best known cookie of that type and usually the first cookie of that type that someone tries. It is the original in their mind.

If your customers are introduced to all of the products in your segment at the same time, they probably won't even know who is the "knockoff" and who is the original.

Also, when I think knockoff I think of some less than desirable product that isn't as good as the "original". Even after we know that Oreos are knockoffs, it doesn't change our perception of them because they make a high quality product that is desirable (if you're in their target market).

Many products that Apple makes could be considered "knockoffs" but again, most people don't think of them that way because they do an excellent job with design and use high quality materials.

It's probably a bit of imposter syndrome, but as long as your products are great then I wouldn't worry about going to market after a competitor.

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

#290

Post by yellowapple »

Const-me wrote: post #197
robertoestivill wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I suggest investing in an SSL certificate for your website? I find it really hard to really trust if that's your contact information ;)

Not OP, but I don’t have certificate on my personal web site either, and I don’t think I need one. > find it really hard to really trust if that's your contact information Because Google implemented warning in their web browser, and you comply without understanding their reasons? SSL is most useful for credit cards processing. SSL makes some sense for e-mails and chat messages, also for authentication. SSL is useless…

> SSL is useless for static content.

No it ain't. The cert is at least some assurance that the static content was not altered in transit between the original server and some MITM. Non-HTTPS sites absolutely suck to browse on less-scrupulous public wi-fi hotspots that try to inject their own ads into your browsing sessions (cough cough Greyhound cough cough).

> It raises barrier for ordinary people

Let's Encrypt has existed for multiple years now. There's certainly an effort-related barrier to entry, but not a financial one.

> 20 years ago most office buildings had a caching proxy like Squid or MS ISA Server.

And they can still have that by setting up their own internal CA and installing their own root cert on company-owned machines. Hell, running an internal CA is pretty standard practice for large enterprises (and even some medium ones) specifically so that Intranet applications can use TLS without browsers whining about self-signed certs.

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