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Convore vs Banterly - Beaten to the punch

bitdrift.com

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Re: Convore vs Banterly - Beaten to the punch

#11

Post by kmfrk »

thecory wrote: post #7
kmfrk wrote: post #4

Why the hell would you want to stop your project over the miniscule adversity of a pseudosimilar, vaguely-defined and -implemented platform that hasn't even gained traction yet? If that's enough to make anyone quit a project, I don't think the startup scene is for that person. For what it's worth, your project looks a lot more interesting. (Aside from the Flash.)

Yeah...on the one hand you want to keep your head down/keep the blinders on/trust in your gut and just plan on plowing through any obstacles that stand in your way. On the other hand, you want to try to keep your eye on the competitive landscape enough to make sure that you're not going heads down into a wall or that you're spending your time on the project that has the best chance for success.

I think any entrepreneur owes it to him- or herself to consider what "competition" actually means. You shouldn't assume it's a zero-sum game, and only one company can exist. If you look closely enough, you'll also see that competitors don't mirror each other as much as you would think, and they leverage their differences to their advantage.

Launching at the same time as a competitor creates more static in the press. I remember when the movie "Deep Impact" was announced close to "Armageddon". I thought to myself "Jesus Christ, this is too much". I don't think that whichever was the last one to hit the big screen was riding the coat tails of the other, or that the earliest one deserved my attention or money more than the last one.

Should Pepsi have called it quits, because they knew that Coca Cola were doing a coca beverage? Of course not. A competitor can be a pain in the ass in some ways, but it also makes for a great way to analyze your market and customers without looking inwards, which can be very difficult for anyone. If they gain traction, you'll know that there's a market.

If they die, you'll have their example as a cautionary tale; if you don't have a lighthouse to navigate by, navigate around the ship wrecks ahead of you.

I think he's annoyed that Convore launched a similar project and received some good press and community love (as little as it is outside the distortion field of the Valleysphere of Techcrunch and HN).

I always think of ReadWriteStart's mantra that "the early bird gets the worm; the second mouse gets the cheese".

"Is it important to be the first one out with the 'same' idea" is one of the many inane theory-crafting discussions that serve little other purpose than discourage people from launching.

Re: Convore vs Banterly - Beaten to the punch

#13

Post by thecory »

kmfrk wrote: post #11
thecory wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah...on the one hand you want to keep your head down/keep the blinders on/trust in your gut and just plan on plowing through any obstacles that stand in your way. On the other hand, you want to try to keep your eye on the competitive landscape enough to make sure that you're not going heads down into a wall or that you're spending your time on the project that has the best chance for success.

I think any entrepreneur owes it to him- or herself to consider what "competition" actually means. You shouldn't assume it's a zero-sum game, and only one company can exist. If you look closely enough, you'll also see that competitors don't mirror each other as much as you would think, and they leverage their differences to their advantage. Launching at the same time as a competitor creates more static in the press.…

Good points...there's so much that goes into making the decision to go forward on any project. Competitors are just one thing to consider. There are maybe other more important things like does this solve a pain point? For example, do people really feel the pain of trying to hold direct conversations on Twitter? Would they prefer to have a real time discussion? If so, how many people would potentially use this type of app? How big is the market? Etc.

p.s. second mouse gets the cheese...hilarious

Re: Convore vs Banterly - Beaten to the punch

#14

Post by axod »

Building a business isn't about 'a punch'. It's about hard work, day after day for a long time.

Convore has got a nice UI, they haven't really got traction yet, and there's space for tons of chat like services. They're nothing new, they've been about for decades and they'll be around for decades yet.

Right now Convore have something like 200 users online. That's not unachievable by any means...

Keep going and listen to your users.

Re: Convore vs Banterly - Beaten to the punch

#15

Post by grantjgordon »

You know, at first blush I would want to throw in the towel as well, but on second thought you really might consider making a proper go of it. The idea has now been validated by a lot of smart people, and frankly you've got a solid MVP going. I'm leaning toward the general sentiment of comments on here. :)

Re: Convore vs Banterly - Beaten to the punch

#16

Post by ladon86 »

Look at what makes you different. The twitter integration is brilliant, it means you can have much faster, realtime conversations bouncing off twitter. That's your angle.

Make the 'Share on Twitter' button more... meaningful. What it really does is open up a chat room for all your twitter followers to join. I don't want to 'Share' it, I want to open my chatroom up to the world on twitter. Not sure how to word that :)

Can you imagine celebrities getting on board with this? It's perfect. 50 Cent would love this, celebs of that ilk on twitter already spend much of their time bantering with fans and this allows them to do it faster. You just need ONE of those twitter celebs to tweet a link to their chatroom and you've got yourself 10,000 new users.

It's twitpic for chatrooms.

Promote it to celebrity tweeps, hard.

Re: Convore vs Banterly - Beaten to the punch

#19

Post by OstiaAntica »

bitdrift wrote: post #8
jessedhillon wrote: post #2

The culture/community of your product is as important as the tech. Myspace held out for a very long time because, for a while, their product was focused on a different set of users than Facebook. Convore -- right now -- attracts a lot of programmers, designers, startup junkies and other tech folks. There is plenty of room and the market is far from decided: 14 y/o girls (not kidding), moms, music fans, sports followe…

Thanks for your feedback! Very well put. As we've been working on Banterly for the past few months, we've had a lot of the same thoughts. That's a big part of the reason we decided to focus our product on the Twitter community first. Our hope has been that as people discuss topics around various #hashtags that they will have a way to take the conversation to a deeper level rather than overwhelming their followers wit…

The hard part about being a solo founder -- you take body-blows like this and you can get hung up on the competition. You need to guard against trying to match Convore feature-for-feature-- definitely stay the course and execute on your core vision. Good luck!
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