Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

andrewchen.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 224 posts

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

#171

Post by perl4ever »

autoexec wrote: post #133
PowerfulWizard wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the marketing differentiation works best when it is driven by factors that are hard to measure and control, but that are perceived as high value, like flavour and style. When buying bottled water, the water is free, you're buying the bottle, the refrigeration, then real-estate & inventory space, and you can compare it on those dimensions, but if you are sensitive to the taste that can override the other facto…

> but if you are sensitive to the taste that can override the other factors. I can taste the difference between certain bottled water brands and that really is the number one concern for me. The differences are much less apparent to me with spring water than in the filtered tap water brands like Dasani and Aquafina (who often add salt and other minerals). For spring water brands I try to buy ones that aren't owned by…

I don't have a strong preference between different brands of water, or between Pepsi and Coke. But that doesn't mean I can't taste the difference. Dasani is almost as distinctive a taste as Coke.

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

#173

Post by perl4ever »

robomartin wrote: post #137
winrid wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porsche and BMW make completely different types of cars compared to Toyota. They are better in different ways with tradeoffs. Reliability wise? Sure they are not far off.

Not really, not if you are looking at averages; which is what I said in my post. A US $250K fire-breathing Porsche is in a category of it's own. Interestingly enough, one of my cars is a Toyota GT-86. I actually chose it over a Porsche 911. I could have bought the 911. In fact I visited the dealer and was ready to commit. On my way back home I drove by the Toyota dealership and decided to go take a look. I left with…

Yeah, well, I bought a Porsche for barely more than a third of a GT-86.

How does it make any sense to say "I bought this car rather than that car for all these reasons" as a follow up to saying cars are interchangeable?

X and Y fill the same role is not in any way a claim that X and Y are indistinguishable (except for marketing), especially when you obviously chose one over the other.

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

#174

Post by perl4ever »

nostrademons wrote: post #89
dheera wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing Subway's market cap now, would you invest in them as an angel investor? You'd be a billionaire right now. They didn't become big by differentiating product. Their sandwiches aren't that special. They became big by coming into existence where people wanted sandwiches.

See the sibling thread about VC-funded branded chains: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465969 They absolutely did become big by differentiating product. There's a Jersey Mike's and an Arby's near my home, as well as a Subway about a mile away. The former two chains came into existence right around the same time (and slightly before) Subway did. They struggle for business, both nationwide and locally. It wouldn…

"What they're missing is the brand."

I have to believe you're wrong, given how awful Subway is compared to every other sub place, particularly Jersey Mikes, Jimmy Johns, Potbelly, DiBellas, even Firehouse Subs. Without doing in depth research, the differentiator has to be their franchising model.

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

#176

Post by perl4ever »

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?"

Generally speaking, I would say the quality of the bread or the cookies. But I don't really go looking for a generic sandwich (like a ham or turkey sub) most of the time. Instead, I go to a place that might be good, find one thing that they do well, that probably doesn't have a direct competitor, and order it over and over again until I'm tired of it. Or alternate with whatever another place does best.

It's my belief that almost all worthwhile restaurants only have one or two things that they do particularly well, so having a huge menu is a negative.

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

#177

Post by peteretep »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #161
robomartin wrote: post #56

Very often engineering types can only think of differentiation in technical terms. I think I can say that, in practice, at least in mature markets, differentiation is more about positioning and marketing rather than almost anything else. Easy examples: - Cars - Bottled water - Computer monitors The vast majority of automobiles produced today have reached a level of design and manufacturing maturity that makes them pr…

> How do they differentiate and sell you cars then? Branding, positioning, marketing. If I'm in the market for a BMW M3, it is because it is a stellar performance car. A Toyota Camry does not fill those roles.

No, but other Toyota models do.

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

#178

Post by perl4ever »

nostrademons wrote: post #96
semiotagonal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, Facebook and Apple are all increasingly hated though, and can't figure out new ways to make money. The time may be coming where taking a shot at their profitable businesses becomes a possibility.

They're hated because they make a lot of money and you don't have a choice about using them. Companies in competitive markets that piss off their customers don't end up hated; rather, people just don't patronize them, and they go out of business. To be hated requires an inability to simply ignore your existence. If you look at institutions in terms of their favorability ratings, it's basically an inverse list of the…

I want to take exception with your neat generalization.

The cable company, at least where I live, (Spectrum) is definitely worse than the government. They have stores, that are like the DMV, but the queue to be waited on is longer - the DMV is significantly more parallelized. And the DMV isn't designed like an Apple store, because people that work for the government aren't quite as shameless about being a monopoly.

When it comes to the feds the IRS has infinitely better customer service than Google (literally, infinitely) and unlike the cable company, when they owe you money, they pay you interest.

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

#179

Post by throwaway1777 »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #161
robomartin wrote: post #56

Very often engineering types can only think of differentiation in technical terms. I think I can say that, in practice, at least in mature markets, differentiation is more about positioning and marketing rather than almost anything else. Easy examples: - Cars - Bottled water - Computer monitors The vast majority of automobiles produced today have reached a level of design and manufacturing maturity that makes them pr…

> How do they differentiate and sell you cars then? Branding, positioning, marketing. If I'm in the market for a BMW M3, it is because it is a stellar performance car. A Toyota Camry does not fill those roles.

That’s positioning and marketing too since you don’t really need the performance. For 99% of the time you use the car they’re about the same. If only life were all twisties and race tracks, but in reality it’s mostly traffic jams.

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

#180

Post by holler »

im3w1l wrote: post #139
holler wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this. While it's an interesting article and thought experiment, I don't think anyone should be discouraged from trying to build the next ride-hailing, dating, or couch-surfing platform simply because others have already found success in it. Competition makes the world spin, and in the grand scheme of things, we're only just beginning.

I think when you make the world's first couch-surfing app you can plausibly tell your self that you are changing the world. The world goes from not having couch-surfing apps to having one. Creating a second couch-surfing app with the idea of out-marketing the first doesn't inspire the same sense of purpose.

Innovation usually happens in small increments. Uber/Lyft/x/y/z ride hailing app, airbnb/vrbo/booking, tinder/bumble/match/pof/bagel/hinge/x/y/z dating app, friendster/myspace/facebook/twitter/pinterest/imgur/giphy/justin.tv/twitch/reddit/hackernews/discord/beam/dlive/slack/x/y/z social app, they're all just incremental. I agree it'd be foolish to try and out-compete or out-spend a goliath, but I'm saying that you can still be competitive in other ways. Build something people enjoy, start there.
Post reply on HN