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Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

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Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#51
A startup should be treated like any other business. Almost every business imaginable has competition, and most manage to survive.

Building a product that appeals to 100% of a "target market" is impossible. Carve your niche, target a particular type of person, and start small.

Competition in your space is a really good thing: 1) as others have said, it validates your ideas viability, and 2) you don't need to spend so much time educating people about a new market and why they need your product.

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#52
Similar to what people said don't worry the competitor validates your b-model and focus on your product not your competitor

In addition, remember to treat your competitors as frenemies. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/12/27/why-you-should... There's much more to learn about your space than you probably think and they've already been in the trenches and might have gone through some pain points you can skip.

Location: If they're national, I'd focus on being local. Look at the way Yelp did things in taking on Zagat, Citysearch, etc by focusing on a core market to build that strong loyal set of powerusers that on average were way more engaged (# of reviews per reviewer).

Lastly, I'd consider trying to figure out the competitors cost model. A lot of times many startups that are well funded get that larger funding round because they're looking to scale which means they're spending extra on marketing or sales. Some startups as such are focused on ramping up a sales team. If that's the case, you'll lose playing the game the way they're playing it (ie: groupon vs a local copycat clone since it might work locally but u'll never scale). Try to figure out different methods to do this, price model, sales model, marketing model (guerilla marketing vs traditional marketing), or whatever that will make you more unique and more cost-effective. Gluck

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#53
post #50

If it is a brand-new startup, it's not worth worrying about them because you are both still so far from reaching a point where everyday users know either of you exist. It's easy to read HN and TechCrunch everyday and become disheartened when closely related products launch, but the reality is that nobody outside Silicon Valley cares until one of their friends tells them about it.

Also, I think when you are building a startup, it is best to largely ignore tech news sites anyway. You can drive yourself crazy reading about others successes and competing products. It helps you keep your product stay original and not easily become distracted when a new feature idea presents itself that makes you go in a totally different direction before your first idea has had a chance to succeed.

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#54
post #43

The exact same thing happened to me a little over a month ago. A few days before the launch of http://limelightapp.com/ , we saw http://app.net/ show up on the front page of HN. Initially, my heart sunk. (You've already felt this, I'm sure.) Thankfully I was sitting next to my wife on the couch, who had the good sense to say: "Go grab a beer." I took her advice. In the end, I can honestly say that having http://app.n…

Exactly. It's also helpful when you can reference an established player in your space and talk about why your product might be better for them, rather than attempt to both explain WHY they need your product and then WHAT your product does.

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#55
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you can take risks that they may be unwilling to take. You don't have group-think to worry about. You can use tools & languages that it's too hard to hire for. As this is a PG site, consider functional systems. I'm a huge haskell fan myself, and holy crap is it faster to develop in, especially early on. In terms of productivity, it can be 10-15x. It's proven as such in my own work. How many devs do they have? L…

"In terms of productivity, it can be 10-15x." Any sources on this? Or is it primarily based on your own experience?

My own experience. Haskell's just fantastic that way. The type system, the libraries, and the tools really make you productive.

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#56
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you can take risks that they may be unwilling to take. You don't have group-think to worry about. You can use tools & languages that it's too hard to hire for. As this is a PG site, consider functional systems. I'm a huge haskell fan myself, and holy crap is it faster to develop in, especially early on. In terms of productivity, it can be 10-15x. It's proven as such in my own work. How many devs do they have? L…

"In terms of productivity, it can be 10-15x." Any sources on this? Or is it primarily based on your own experience?

I'm curions about this too. Haskell is my hobby language right now, I'm still an uber-noob, but my impression is Haskell code is easily 10-15x more robust, but not necessarily more productive than cool-kid languages (Ruby, Python, Javascript).

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#59
post #43

The exact same thing happened to me a little over a month ago. A few days before the launch of http://limelightapp.com/ , we saw http://app.net/ show up on the front page of HN. Initially, my heart sunk. (You've already felt this, I'm sure.) Thankfully I was sitting next to my wife on the couch, who had the good sense to say: "Go grab a beer." I took her advice. In the end, I can honestly say that having http://app.n…

Went and checked out LimeLight, really nice, I think you are addressing a market need that very much exists, so keep at it.

One little suggestion, you should have some example sites right from the homepage. The video is good (thought edit out the publish bug!), but first and foremost I wanted both validation that others are using it, and wanted to be able to see it in action.

Good luck with it!

Re: Ask HN: A Well Funded Competitor Has Launched Before Me What Should I do?

#60
Eric Ries once told us the following: "Just fucking ignore them."

That was the best advice someone could have given me for a situation like that. I'd advise it.

My ancillary advice would be: Use it as fuel to absolutely destroy them in a race of producing incredible product value to your customers.

Our startup competitors have existed 1-2 years before we did.

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