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Someone has launched the same niche website idea as me. Do I abandon the idea?

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Re: Someone has launched the same niche website idea as me. Do I abandon the idea?

#11
For some reason, we tech geeks, give way too much importance to the uniqueness of the idea. If your idea is any good, there will certainly be competitors.

Imagine this - You launch first. This competitor of yours launches the next day. If they still kick your ass by having a better product or marketing, then it doesn't matter if you launched first.

If the thought of a competitor entering the market makes you want to run, then you need to toughen up.

It's better to focus on your users anyway. The only way to think about competitors is to learn how to serve your users better. Competitors exist to do free market research for you.

Sorry to invoke a cliche, but at the stage you are, execution is all that matters.

Re: Someone has launched the same niche website idea as me. Do I abandon the idea?

#12
I'd say, launch it and keep close watch of your competitor. There almost certainly will be future opportunities where you can make a name for yourself, either by learning from your competitor's mistake or by generalizing and grabbing a bigger market share or perhaps by having better filtering and therefore more refined content or the like. And if you are planning to take away some of his market share make sure that switching will be a sweat less action.
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