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Other startup got there before me. Stop or continue?

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Re: Other startup got there before me. Stop or continue?

#51

Post by ivenkys »

My 2 cents.

Stop or continue really depends on two things (a) Who is your competitor ? (b) What market are you in ?

From your description your competitor albeit well funded is not established and therefore has exactly the same problem as you - getting customers, this is good. However, if your competitor is someone with deep "links" with Google or Apple or MS or one of the other companies with cash, quit now. Check the background of the founders of the competitor. What sort of track record do they have ? Are they ex-senior members of google, yahoo et all ?

What market you are in matters a lot, is it a market that provides opportunities for specialisation - Continue, are you already in a niche-area of a large market - Stop. Can the market be expanded ? Is there an already existing market with clear pain points or are you building a new one ?

Summary: Weigh your options carefully based on the competitor and the market. All the best.

Re: Other startup got there before me. Stop or continue?

#52

Post by renauldo56 »

You are toast against a machine with funding and a 20-person team, unless that team is lead by incompetents or staffed with incompetents.

Sorry. But that's one of the main reasons why getting venture is a good idea: part-timers or self-funders can't possibly bring the same resources.

Re: Other startup got there before me. Stop or continue?

#53

Post by mattmaroon »

CamperBob wrote: post #41
maxklein wrote: post #22

Nobody should work for months on an iPhone app. The platform is not friendly to that style of app. Work for weeks, launch and test.

Counterpoint: an iPhone has about the same computing power as the first-gen Xbox. People will eventually put a commensurate amount of development effort into it, and you will have to compete with them.

The problem isn't the iPhone's specs, it's the distribution network.

Re: Other startup got there before me. Stop or continue?

#54

Post by RyanMcGreal »

maxklein wrote: post #49
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Work for weeks, launch and test. I don't know how friendly the platform is for that approach, either. Fast iteration works better when you don't have the bottleneck of app store reviewers.

App store review at the moment takes about 3 days. And even when it took 2 weeks, this is not a big problem. Iterating faster than two weeks would be annoying to your users - imaging have to constantly sync a new app every second day, and new bugs being introduced and so on. The two week review period is good for users.

Good point. I guess I still default to comparing iPhone apps with web apps, on which you can iterate as fast as you want as long as the changes aren't disruptive to existing user work flows.

Re: Other startup got there before me. Stop or continue?

#55

Post by dennykmiu »

Doing a startup is not unlike taking a long bike ride. You will fall off your bike time and time again, either due to inexperience or obstacles along the path. Now is the time to do an equipment check before you ride again. Don’t try to restart your journey right away unless you are confident that you have the physical endurance and the support of your family (i.e., your wife, as a business partner and as a spouse). Think of your family, your health and your startup as the three legs of your three-legged stool. If you wobble on one but solid on the other two, then at least you have a fighting chance. If you have any doubt on anything, now is the perfect time to walk away and blame it on a broken bike. But keep in mind that as I have learned in my recent climb in Africa, you don't get to the top of Kilimanjaro by stopping, you do so by resting.

Re: Other startup got there before me. Stop or continue?

#58

Post by mortenjorck »

wensing wrote: post #3

It may be a lost cause, or not. See if they mess up. Regardless, forget features-at-large and focus on the best features, which are: 1. It works. 2. It's easy to use. You can always one-up in those categories.

Yes and yes. The biggest part that's often overlooked in a product that does something new is how well it does it.

Don't worry about matching them feature for feature because they've got 20 people and you've got 2. Use your size and the fact that you don't have to pass ideas through a meeting to your advantage. Study their product. Find the weaknesses in their UI. Isolate the pain points. Make your product a breeze to use precisely where theirs is kludgy.

Ultimately, people will prefer the better experience to the more feature-rich one. If you can deliver the former, it doesn't matter how long they've been in the market.

Re: Other startup got there before me. Stop or continue?

#59

Post by CamperBob »

mattmaroon wrote: post #53
CamperBob wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: an iPhone has about the same computing power as the first-gen Xbox. People will eventually put a commensurate amount of development effort into it, and you will have to compete with them.

The problem isn't the iPhone's specs, it's the distribution network.

It would be a grievous mistake to assume that the current limitations of the distribution network will remain in place forever.
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