Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#221

Post by pradn » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

sheetjs wrote: post #53

nexuist wrote: post #16

A while ago, I was in the same boat. Why try to recreate GitHub, or Uber, or Salesforce, or Facebook? And once I discovered any competitors in my idea's field, I would chalk it down to "not worth trying" and call it a day. But then I realized, if my town can have 3-4 Chinese restaurants with the same exact menus (probably supplied by the same exact distributors), and they've all operated continuously for over a decad…

Also worth noting the downside of scale: some opportunities are "too small" for a Microsoft or Google to pursue. Google revenue for 2018 was $136.8B. Extra effort to possibly address a small niche segment of a market, that would improve revenue by $1M per year, is too small to draw anyone's attention. However, that same $1M/yr is enough to sustain a bootstrapped business and even possibly build the credibility to rai…

Also personnel costs at FAANG are high - something like 200-250k per engineer. The upside has to be very high, accounting for the personnel costs, to make building a product worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#222

Post by reidjs » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

mijoharas wrote: post #211

Const-me wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but I don’t have certificate on my personal web site either, and I don’t think I need one. > find it really hard to really trust if that's your contact information Because Google implemented warning in their web browser, and you comply without understanding their reasons? SSL is most useful for credit cards processing. SSL makes some sense for e-mails and chat messages, also for authentication. SSL is useless…

> Increases entry barrier, centralizing internet even more. For-profit internet companies have zero issues paying for certificates, it’s part of their business. It raises barrier for ordinary people. Also creates more incentive for placing ads on their web sites to reduce costs. Guess who earns most profits from internet ads? Lets encrypt is one obvious thing to mention here, besides removing the cost barrier to entr…

It can actually be quite difficult to set up if you have a non standard configuration.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#223

Post by dsalzman » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

This reminds me of an old blog of mine.

"The culture of Googling everything is diminishing innovation and critical thinking."

Person A: "I have this great Idea!" Person B: "What is it?" Person A: "Well its ______ for ______!. Isn't that awesome" Person B: (Quickly googles on his phone) "There are already X companies doing exactly that" Person A: "Ohhh..."(Drops his head in shame and moves on"

The most innovative ideas were mostly created by multiple people independently and not knowingly.

Do the lowered barriers to knowledge reduce our ability for critical thinking? How can we maximize the inherent benefits of the web; while minimizing these negative 2nd order effects?

https://dannysalzman.com/second-order-google-effect/

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#224

Post by Const-me » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

jdormit wrote: post #220

Const-me wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but I don’t have certificate on my personal web site either, and I don’t think I need one. > find it really hard to really trust if that's your contact information Because Google implemented warning in their web browser, and you comply without understanding their reasons? SSL is most useful for credit cards processing. SSL makes some sense for e-mails and chat messages, also for authentication. SSL is useless…

> SSL is useless for static content This is just... false. Without SSL, static content can be MITM'd just like anything else. Don't believe me? Connect to the WiFi in any Starbucks and visit http://example.com . That redirect to the Starbucks WiFi login page certainly isn't being served from example.com... Please stop spreading misinformation about SSL.

> Connect to the WiFi in any Starbucks

Need to cross national borders for that, more than once.

> That redirect to the Starbucks WiFi login page certainly isn't being served from example.com

Also saw these things here in a couple of places. Most places here don’t charge for WiFi and have a single PSK key for all clients, but couple indeed ask for authentication this way.

I’m not sure how SSL helps? As a user, I don’t want to have access to WiFi blocked, I rather prefer redirects. Despite it’s technically MITM, it does the job i.e. allows to access the network.

> stop spreading misinformation about SSL

I have written that unless it’s credit card numbers or other sensitive content like e-mails or facebook messages, there’s very little security value in it, and it costs web sites owners. What exactly do you think is the misinformation in this statement?

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#225

Post by ccozan » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

blacksoil wrote: post #29

karterk wrote: post #3

It depends on the size of the total addressable market. If the size of your target market is big, even if there are bigger established players, there is always a chance for a small, nimble product to carve out a niche. Established players often head upmarket (especially if they are VC funded). This often gives an opening for a new entrant to capture some of the SMB market share. An example closer to me: the search en…

I'm one of the people who'd definitely use an alternative to ElasticSearch! I hate the fact that elastic search is using Java. It just takes up too much memory.

Please also check Xapian [1].

[1] https://xapian.org/

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#226

Post by c0vfefe » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #117

alexobenauer wrote: post #38

Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question (it's a common one!): You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info, and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that excitement and ideation…

I would go one step further: don't Google the existing solutions at all. If you haven't heard of any one of them by the time you are done conceiving it you are in the exact same position as the other companies are, possibly minus some funding and their initial batch of customers. There are far more potential customers that haven't heard from either of you yet. So your next order of battle then becomes to try to conta…

> If you haven't heard of any one of them by the time you are done conceiving it you are in the exact same position as the other companies are

This assumes that you can do meaningful research without ever Googling the problem space, which is virtually the same as finding competitors. And if you don't research at all while conceiving it, how exactly would you hear about competitors?

> don't bother mapping it until you've established your position well enough that you are actually in competition, until that time it is usually a waste of time.

Trying to open, say, a grocery store without the knowledge of a Walmart down the street sounds like the definition of wasted time.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#227

Post by ankit219 » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

narag wrote: post #146

ankit219 wrote: post #134

My $0.02. If you feel like the problem exists, start building. But, if you think the problem is solved, then it makes no sense to proceed with it. For a startup, people use your product because they have a problem to solve. It does not matter how bad your UI/UX is, how drastically bad your flows are, if you are offering a solution no one else is, you will have users. It just needs to work. The more pertinent the prob…

For a startup, people use your product because they have a problem to solve. It does not matter how bad your UI/UX is, how drastically bad your flows are, if you are offering a solution no one else is, you will have users. It just needs to work. It's funny because I came to the same conclusion years ago, but had not written it until yesterday in a different context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19770812 Great…

True that. Great minds really do think alike :)

I came to the conclusion the hard way when I focused on UI/UX (it should look good) instead of focusing on providing the best possible solution. This is the most important learning I took from the entire entrepreneurial experience.

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#228

Post by thameera » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 3:19 PM UTC

rburhum wrote: post #171

alexobenauer wrote: post #38

Here's the recommendation I give to students when they ask me this question (it's a common one!): You come up with a brilliant idea, you obsess over it, you Google some info, and on your screen lies your idea, being done by someone else, for the last two years. You’re all too familiar with that sinking feeling in your stomach that follows. You abandon the idea almost immediately after all that excitement and ideation…

Great advice, so I am not going to repeat this because I 100% agree with it. However additionally I would add that if you think that it is the software alone that will make or break the company, then it is obvious that this is your first time doing this and that you have never brought a product to market. There are a ton of examples where one product that was of less quality absolutely annihilated another excellent p…

> good software is not enough to win

This might give the idea that good software is necessary [1] to win, but history has proven this is not always the case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#229

Post by thameera » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

Const-me wrote: post #224

jdormit wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SSL is useless for static content This is just... false. Without SSL, static content can be MITM'd just like anything else. Don't believe me? Connect to the WiFi in any Starbucks and visit http://example.com . That redirect to the Starbucks WiFi login page certainly isn't being served from example.com... Please stop spreading misinformation about SSL.

> Connect to the WiFi in any Starbucks Need to cross national borders for that, more than once. > That redirect to the Starbucks WiFi login page certainly isn't being served from example.com Also saw these things here in a couple of places. Most places here don’t charge for WiFi and have a single PSK key for all clients, but couple indeed ask for authentication this way. I’m not sure how SSL helps? As a user, I don’t…

While this may not answer all your questions, here's a good write up about the topic by Troy Hunt, a respected thought-leader in the industry: https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-why-your-static-website-needs...

Re: Ask HN: Are you put off building something because it already exists?

#230

Post by c0vfefe » Mon, Apr 29, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

welly wrote: post #142

planb wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You restaurant analogy fails, because restaurants are at a fixed physical location and the seats are constrained. I find Ben Thompson's "Aggregation Theory" quite insightful on this topic: https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/ That's not to say that you cannot be successfull running a small service, but it needs to be differentiated in some way and not just copy the existing ones (which works fine for a ch…

That's fair but how about streets in any big city or town (certainly in the UK) where there is fried chicken shop after fried chicken shop after kebab shop after another kebab shop? The only thing that differentiates each of those places are usually the logos and the name of the shop (London Fried Chicken, Tasty Fried Chicken, Hackney Fried Chicken etc. - not a great deal of imagination there). The food is almost ide…

Small shops multiply instead of swelling because their capacity limitations are either a high barrier to individual growth or an essential feature of their service ('coziness').