Great product, I loved it but I'd be in great trouble trying to monetize, hope you'll nail it.
Why I am building a product with a tiny market
61–70 of 120 posts
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#62Nothing about what has been built or blogged makes me believe this person really understands products or markets. The logic of the points that are being made is flawed, starting with repeatedly conflating building a product for a small market with solving a small and simple problem. These are not the same. In general, solving problems for small markets is just as hard as solving problems for big ones. My advice is, a…
Small markets don't attract large well funded competitors (because their investors don't let them target them or redirect them to larger markets) allowing you to develop and refine an offering you can then aim at larger adjacent markets/segments. One good book that outlines the trade-offs is "The Origin and Evolution of New Business" by Amar Bhide that did a rigorous analysis of the Inc 500 companies.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#63Nothing about what has been built or blogged makes me believe this person really understands products or markets. The logic of the points that are being made is flawed, starting with repeatedly conflating building a product for a small market with solving a small and simple problem. These are not the same. In general, solving problems for small markets is just as hard as solving problems for big ones. My advice is, a…
> In general, solving problems for small markets is just as hard as solving problems for big ones. Surely that can't be right. The very nature of a small market, implies that the solutions are easier - because of less competition, so less innovation is needed, therefore lower return. With larger markets, not only do you have to solve a problem - you have to solve a problem better/different than your competitors. Not…
Your intuition is not entirely correct.
Competition and the size of the market are not always correlated.
The superior strategy is to maximize returns against efforts, not minimize potential for competition.
The essential argument is that a small market provides small returns therefore go after small markets is not the same as proving that the returns are better in proportion to the cost, in time, resources or opportunity.
Most large markets are divided in following a Pareto distribution, which is to say the winners dominate. You don't have a pie divided between competitors, you have most of the pie going to 2-3 players. Be a player.
When you see a large number of 'competitors' in a market, as often as not the market fragmentation is on the buyer side.
Again, I don't buy the small market simplicity argument, and I especially don't buy that small markets offer the best returns for effort. There is an abundance of large markets, many of which are underserved.
If you see an opportunity to squeeze a little market with a CRUD app, by all means, don't let me stop you, but I don't believe that is a superior strategy.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you learn nothing else from Wikipedia, learn this: Begging annoys users and isn't particularly successful. As far as I know, Wikipedia fundraising efforts have been very successful. They got $25 million dollars just last year. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia...
Yes, and as the fifth most popular site in the world, that is a pittance. They could be making billions with unobtrusive advertising. Given their traffic, the fact that they only raised $25 million last year means that nearly all of their users ignored their pleas for help. Further, when they do their begging, it is very obtrusive and disruptive to the user experience. Where alternative revenue models are available,…
What revenue models? Advertising could skew/bias Wikipedia
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#65OP. Thanks for making debuggex! It has certainly changed the way I write regexes...I now reach for debuggex _before_ I start writing a new (non-trivial) regex. Fantastic tool.
One think that I would really love is to be able to used named capture groups like in Python.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#66I fed it a favorite regex... Bravo. Unfortunately, the permalinking fails with this particular regex, or I'd include it here. The visualization is so large, it more than fills my large screen. Still, pretty cool to see it render instantaneously and to watch it match example text. The regex is described here: http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~cameron/REX.html It will match either text or XML markup (it's used to tokenize XML), so…
Wow. How the hell do you (OP) get it to render so fast? That was instantaneous as far as I could tell. I've seen websites take 5x as long to add a to a ... I'm really amazed.
You're not kidding; it is virtually instantaneous in Chrome, IE9 & Firefox.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#67OP. Thanks for making debuggex! It has certainly changed the way I write regexes...I now reach for debuggex _before_ I start writing a new (non-trivial) regex. Fantastic tool. One think that I would really love is to be able to used named capture groups like in Python.
Hey Randle,
I read your blog post, and have kept named groups on my mind. Support for more languages is planned. However, I should note that it will be a premium feature.
I really appreciate the continued support.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#68Nothing about what has been built or blogged makes me believe this person really understands products or markets. The logic of the points that are being made is flawed, starting with repeatedly conflating building a product for a small market with solving a small and simple problem. These are not the same. In general, solving problems for small markets is just as hard as solving problems for big ones. My advice is, a…
In a small market the MVP will be more salable than in a larger market; regardless of the complexity of the MVP. That's the OP's point. Any other reason you think this person has no understanding of markets? Because so far you've got nothing.
What makes you believe that an MVP will be more salable in a small market? I see no model or evidence to support this thinking.
I also believe you are too focused on 'minimal' at the expense of 'viable' in MVP.
If you have relatively a relatively viable product, where would you rather sell? I'll take a big market every time.
If the point is what you say, then why does the original post repeatedly return to the theme of the simplicity of the solution?
I say the person has no understanding of markets because no point being made in the original post is actually about markets, or products for that matter. There is just a list of assertions and assumptions to justify choices that were already made.
If you want to build products for small markets, by all means, go to it.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and as the fifth most popular site in the world, that is a pittance. They could be making billions with unobtrusive advertising. Given their traffic, the fact that they only raised $25 million last year means that nearly all of their users ignored their pleas for help. Further, when they do their begging, it is very obtrusive and disruptive to the user experience. Where alternative revenue models are available,…
What revenue models? Advertising could skew/bias Wikipedia
why would advertising skew the factual information presented in wikipedia? Advertising is based off content, content isn't based off advertising.
Re: Why I am building a product with a tiny market
#70Nothing about what has been built or blogged makes me believe this person really understands products or markets. The logic of the points that are being made is flawed, starting with repeatedly conflating building a product for a small market with solving a small and simple problem. These are not the same. In general, solving problems for small markets is just as hard as solving problems for big ones. My advice is, a…
Small markets don't attract large well funded competitors (because their investors don't let them target them or redirect them to larger markets) allowing you to develop and refine an offering you can then aim at larger adjacent markets/segments. One good book that outlines the trade-offs is "The Origin and Evolution of New Business" by Amar Bhide that did a rigorous analysis of the Inc 500 companies.
If the goal to stay small and unfunded, I still take the position that you should look for the largest market you can realistically provide solutions for.
A single programmer writing CRUD apps isn't going to become a competitive telco. I'm not saying wade into fights you can't win,just that if you have to decide between two projects, a considerably larger market should be key to the decision.
Thanks for the book recommendation.