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“Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

andrewchen.co

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Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#61

Post by ronilan »

kristopolous wrote: post #41
ronilan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how UPS differentiates themselves from FedEx. Wikipedia will tell you that UPS started as a parcel delivery service in the early 20th century. Naturally it was ground based and evolved that way. FedEx was founded in the 70s as a technology driven startup with the idea of using planes for delivery. FedEx was UPS for Express Deliveries. X for Y.

Let's try it another way, "there can be more than one sandwich shop"

Obviously.

With sandwich shops, location is a key differentiator. We are X for Y, where X is the sandwich shop and Y is specific location.

Sandwich shops is also a highly competitive market. As such, when you look at a snapshot in time it seems like there is diversity without strong differentiation. However, in most cases, if you look at it historically you’ll see that differentiation at inception was required.

Fun note - the largest sandwich shop of all started growth when it became “a commercial real-estate company for franchised sandwich shops”.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#62

Post by rwmurrayVT »

QuinnWilton wrote: post #8
alex-wallish wrote: post #2

"Airbnb for Gamers" according to the infographic isn't taken. Any potential there? Letting people rent out their physical gaming rigs to other people in the area, in their homes. Seems like it'd be pretty easy to set up. I could see it be kind of like gaming cafe's in Asia, except you'd be renting a rig in somebody's actual home. I don't know if there'd be any market for this, but it seems like it wouldn't take to mu…

I suspect that, at least in places with decent internet, something like ShadowPC negates the need for such a service. I rent a top of the line gaming PC for ~$25/month, and run my games in the cloud. With what I used to spend keeping a gaming rig upgraded, it doesn't even make sense not to rent something that's always going to be state of the art.

The cheapest I see is 25 dollars a month billed annually :(

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#63

Post by kristopolous »

notJim wrote: post #50
kristopolous wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's try it another way, "there can be more than one sandwich shop"

Sandwich shops differentiate themselves from each other considerably though, so I'm not sure this is a good analogy.

Ok cool, more than one Patel owned motel, more than one Cambodian owned donut shop in the LA basin...

The point is that the existence of something isn't a valid reason to not do it. Sometimes not even an excuse to not do it in a nearly identical way.

If someone wants to make say a tetris clone, I say go ahead, make the best one you can make. Take pride and joy in your accomplishments. I hope it will be great.

YACC was named "yet another compiler compiler" because in the 1970s, there were plenty of others around and it was yet another one. But it was well built, well designed, and done anyway. It survived, the others didn't.

You have an idea, others are doing it? So what? Do it.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#65

Post by baddox »

kristopolous wrote: post #41
ronilan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how UPS differentiates themselves from FedEx. Wikipedia will tell you that UPS started as a parcel delivery service in the early 20th century. Naturally it was ground based and evolved that way. FedEx was founded in the 70s as a technology driven startup with the idea of using planes for delivery. FedEx was UPS for Express Deliveries. X for Y.

Let's try it another way, "there can be more than one sandwich shop"

And how do you decide which sandwich shop to go to when you want a sandwich? You've just answered the question "how does a sandwich shop differentiate itself?"

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#67

Post by nostrademons »

snegu wrote: post #18

One category that's missing on the left is "Parents." There's Tinder for parents (Peanut), Birchbox for parents (multiple subscription boxes). It would be interesting to think about what Uber or AirBnB for parents would be. I couldn't read the article though because I got that absurd uncloseable newsletter subscription screen. That was one of the most user-hostile things I've seen on a website lately.

So Tinder for parents is a terrible idea. (Full disclosure: my wife's a Peanut member. She's been meaning to uninstall it for a while.) Think about the key observations that made Tinder take over the dating space: people are basically superficial and judge who to go out with based on looks alone; people have spare time to flip through photos; people want to be casual and not invest too much in a date before getting to know them. These are the exact opposite qualities that you want in a mom-friend. When you're a new mom you're probably not looking your best, and putting up a profile picture isn't high on your list of things to do. You don't give a shit what your mom friends look like, and once you're reading through text it's more like "Facebook for moms". You have very little free time to swipe through profiles, and when you do, you want your mom-friend-relationships to count.

There's a lesson there for people who want to phrase their startup idea as "X for Y". You should ask how similar Y is to the userbase that originally made X popular, and whether you are capturing the qualities they have in common or just randomly cargo-culting a successful product. "Flickr for video" works because a photo-viewing community and video-viewing community are substantially similar: they both have similar casual interactions around shared multimedia, and they both benefit heavily from recommendations, discovery mechanisms, and social sharing. Similarly, "Google for China" works because people in China have information needs too yet actual Google has an antagonistic relationship with the CCP. "Uber for laundry" and "Uber for housecleaning" are both terrible ideas because Uber's value proposition is that you can get transportation on-demand and it can be done by unskilled people as long as they get you safely to your final destination, while both housecleaning and laundry are stuff you do once a week, on a planned basis, and you really want to trust the people who are doing it. "Uber for grocery delivery" (Instacart/UberEats/DoorDash/Postmates) is a decent idea, though, because grocery delivery is also something you want on-demand, do regularly, and can be done by basically anyone.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#68

Post by dheera »

baddox wrote: post #65
kristopolous wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's try it another way, "there can be more than one sandwich shop"

And how do you decide which sandwich shop to go to when you want a sandwich? You've just answered the question "how does a sandwich shop differentiate itself?"

In my case, usually whichever one is closest. If I want good food I wouldn't be going for a sandwich.

Even in the case of good food, it's usually the closest one that meets a certain bar. You could serve identical food as a distant, good restaurant and I would go to yours if you were closer. You don't need to differentiate, especially if you are serving a standard, authentic rendition of some ethnic dish.

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#69

Post by riantogo »

rolltiide wrote: post #26
dheera wrote: post #3

Besides the "X for Y" approach, I find it laughable that every time someone says they are doing just "X" that the usual Bay Area response is "How are you differentiating from your competitors?" Go ask how UPS differentiates themselves from FedEx. Or how Shell differentiates themselves from Chevron. In reality, while product differentiation is good, unless there already exists a monopoly that has eaten every inch of t…

I just tell people that my neighborhood also has multiple grocery stores

Are they all exactly the same? Target? Safeway? Food4Less? Do you see any differentiation between these? Would it be a reasonable assumption that conversations like, "I like to go to Target over Safeway because..." happens?

Re: “Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups

#70

Post by tompccs »

acrefoot wrote: post #53
kristopolous wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's try it another way, "there can be more than one sandwich shop"

The "Zero to One" wisdom is that lots of competition means low margins for the business. It's very difficult to afford much more than minimum wages for your sandwich shop employees. That's part of why you don't see a lot of venture-funded restaurants.

Actually, in the UK at least there are VC firms which invest solely in retail and food businesses. Usually they take an already existing restaurant with a single location and turn it into a chain. It is possible to create scalable value in the retail and restaurant businesses, mainly due to the power of brand recognition.
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