I'm depressed and I need help!

Hi @omsharp,

That is great news!

You have a competitor which means you have additional proof that you are on to something. Building a new product is a completely new space is risky, your competitor has helped de-risk your work.

They're shipping features fast? Great. Use their work to understand what you should build. Put "your users" in front of their product and get feedback on what is and is not important. Use that to decide your roadmap. Cheaper than building the wrong thing.

They are advertising heavily? Fantastic. Track all their Ad copy, keywords, etc. in a spreadsheet, watch how it changes over time. When you are ready to pay for ads use that spreadsheet to know what works. They're paying for you to learn.

Good luck!

I think you need to stop being so dramatic & emotional, this is an app not the loss of a family member. Get some perspective.

Things are not bad, it how we decide to label events that matter.

I’ve launched probably 40 products, only 2/3 have actually worked.

If people are using Ads it’s actuallly a bad sign for them. You don’t need Ads.

All my products have been launched by hand and grown by word of mouth. You can use ads but only when you are product market fit.

Go for a run, take a cold shower and reassess.

What is the product? Can I try it? Happy to help.

I was exactly in your position last September.

Out of no where, a seemingly funded company showed up with my idea, the only difference being they did more... they implemented this one huge feature that I didn't think I could do. And they moved faster, had better design, looked sleeker, and somehow already had 5,000 users and $300,000 gmv. I had like $1000 gmv and 150 users (more like 15 active users) , which is like $20 of profit.

How could we beat them? We were a two person team - myself a newly self taught dev and my spouse, a non-technical musician who was helping where he could.

I felt defeated. People weren't using us. We didn't do the one huge feature the competitor did. No one heard of us. Potential users asked why use us when they could use the competitor?

I thought I should give up. Instead, I reluctantly gave myself 6 months to continue. If we didn't make progress by then, I would quit.

We decided to differentiate from the competitor because we could not compete.

We focused on marketing the positives of not having that feature. It did allow for some benefits- we could guarantee certain things the competitor couldn't. And we focused on a niche NSFW market that the competitor abandoned because the competitor seemed to want to present themselves as a vanilla company now.

Today we are bigger than the competitor was in September. However they are huge now!!!! But they don't scare me much anymore. We both have a slice of the pie.

A lot of people switched to us at different points when this competitor disappointed them. That feature that I didn't think I could implemented- apparently they had trouble with it too. So people switched to us many times when that feature caused issues. And while I thought the competitor was sleeker, apparently many users thought their UX was bad and ours was more intuitive. Additionally, a lot of NSFW creators were turned off to the fact that the competitor no longer marketed to the NSFWs. These users used us simply because our positioning. Still many use both of us for different features.

And there were other competitors who showed up too. One looked huge and had famous NSFW partners and was pitching investors. But none of my users have ever heard of them. The other one is thriving among a slightly different NSFW niche.

Now I'm not saying you will have this turn of events. But this is my experience. Time + differentiating was my solution.

Also we did this without any paid ads. It was all free twitter marketing. So you don't necessarily need money to compete.

In fact, you may want to play to your strengths as a bootstrapper. You can go slow. You can niche down. If your competition has investors they cannot afford to niche down. They will go for the biggest market or die trying fast. Most investors will not settle for a business with 25k profit per month but you can.

Remember every situation is different and you know best but time + differentiation.

Positioning is also so important in differentiating. As an example, most of you have probably heard of Buy Me A Coffee. I don't consider them a competitor but they are extremely similar to us. The reason I don't consider them a competitor? When I ask my users why they don't use Buy Me A Coffee they say they don't trust it. No one they know uses it. Many people they know use my company. I always thought BMAC was this huge trustworthy company everyone uses- because it's marketed to me. But it doesn't reach their circle, while my small company does.

original post:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-have-a-competitor-and-feel-outmatched-4e19f0f68b

the follow up:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/update-to-i-have-a-competitor-and-feel-outmatched-now-i-am-as-big-as-they-were-ec6bd93538

There's your validation that your ideas are worthy of implementation. Don't take it for granted, as the opposite is far more common and far more brutal.

Screw it. If you believe in your idea go for it.
I just listened to the IH podcast interview with the founder of Vue.js (an open-source front-end framework). Vue.js competes successfully with Angular (Google) and React (Meta) and dozens of other front-ends. The founder uses Patreon and sponsors to work on his "baby". He found his unique voice in the crowded market and connected with sponsors who appreciate his vision. Maybe such a model will work for you.

Hey Ömer, there will always be good competitors, their super teams and budgets.

When I started for monitup.com, there were competitors who had been in the industry for 10,15 years. they had many clients, teams and budgets, but I only had a project that I wanted to do.

I am also developing by myself, and working full time and 1 usd = 18 Turkish lira in my country. This is the project I have been dealing with for 2 years and now I have only 12 clients.

Despite all the negativities and difficulties, I continue to fight. These challenges will teach you many different ways, they will improve you. This is a long marathon, you have to keep moving forward, albeit slowly.

I hope this video from jason fried give you the answer https://youtu.be/XzvUX1IAHos

Hey @omsharp

The single most important thing every single person on earth could do is work on their mental health. Good for you for recognising the effects this is having.

this is where I am so grateful for having a co-founder. May be something worth considering? Many hands make light work.

Hello Omar, tough situation. Mental health for founders is a hard one, but being around and getting support from other entrepreneurs both online and IRL is very important.

Going to give you advice you may well not like. As you know, the magic is in execution, not the idea. I'd approach the CEO/founder of the competitor and acknowledge you had a strikingly similar idea. I'd then offer to work w/ him/them to help build the thing. They're building fast, executing, and from what you say, appear to have financial support. Help them, get paid, and work with them to grow it as much as you can.

More than anything, whichever direction you want to go, keep positive and build your startup community of support around you. Good luck.

I would look less around and focus on your idea. Your product will be different and can be better. There are many way to achieve this, one of them is to keep customers in the loop and while you dev, keep conversations and feedback.
An indie hacker journey is full or surprises. It's an adventure. Embrace it!

I'm sorry about your situation, I still think you should continue. There are lots of stuff to learn from this experience: perseverance, self-belief, optimism, tenacity, and so on.

"And to put you in perspective, here where I live 1 USD = 5 of the local currency."

This is a common misconception I see everywhere, the nominal value of a currency says nothing about the local prices. In other words if in your country 1 USD = 1000 Localcoins, that does not mean a dollar will go longer, it does not work like that. Those are orthogonal concepts.

There are always other people that are going to build the same idea to yours, similar to how tons of people build courses for the same topics (there are hundreds of JS courses out there). So if you still want to pursue this and put your own spin to your product, you still can but don't feel like you "have to" continue if you don't think it's worth your time anymore BUT it's very likely this will always happen with most (if not all) products there's usually competitors.

Consider it as a good sign my man. I used to work on a product where there is no competitor, and after a year of struggle, I realize there is no demand.

So having competitors is good, that means you have a level of proof that the demand is there.

Having funds is shooting steroids, that helps a lot when your product is ready to expand, but it would also fasten your death. So you should investigate what your competitors doing. Use their products, and talk to their customers (if you can find one).

How's their advertisement strategy, are they working? etc.

You really should not be worried at all because first you're not gonna be the only one in the market, second, ads or pushing features doesn't mean growth ... they can push a feature every week and spend thousands of dollars and yet get nothing in return.

You can do cold emails and get your first customers that way while also focusing on SEO for the long run, you can go after a different ICP, if your idea solves a big problem then you can charge more than your competitor and it will be a good thing.

You're gonna have competitors and people trying to copy your product, your landing page, your blog posts, your tweets and everything you do, this means your product is worth it and that should make you keep going forward.

I know it can be frustrating, but you came this far and you have an idea in mind so keep going and no matter what problem you face, I believe you can solve it one way or another.

I agree with the comment below! You have a competitor which means that your idea was VALID .

Risk vs. Reward. You've gotten lots of good advice on dealing with competitors. However, if I were you, I'd move on. Why?

You sound like you haven't started yet. You don't have customers to worry about or to pay the bills. You don't have that many sunk costs to write off.

I had my business for nearly 7 years before a well-funded competitor showed up. I had SEO, referrals, goodwill and experience on my side. They built a better mousetrap, but I had my unique value proposition, my installed base and lower overhead. I hated the arrival of competition, but I was in a much better position to manage it and had much more invested to keep going. Competitors can make you better or they can cause you to rush crappy code, waste money on marketing and generally live a more stressful life than you wanted.

Only you can decide if the opportunity cost is worth it. You can definitely compete and be successful. But is that the journey you want if you could pivot and find a niche without better-funded competition or where your niche was easier to define/protect?

Having a competitor is positive. It's inevitable for any successful business. You can learn from them, and it shows you there is a market there!

What I'd recommend is figuring out your unique proposition if you haven't already. Why would a customer choose you over them? Is it the type of customer you deliver your solution for? Perhaps a unique approach with your solution?

Overall - this is good news. It will get you thinking about your unique offering and positioning, which is crucial for your success!

hey omar! i can understand same happens to me i shared my idea with my friend and he implement it and takes the credits but i think am better because he skips many things but still i didn't loose hope and keep progressing on the same project and came up with the new things.
just remember: " after every problem there will be ease" and "a man gets whats he strives for" -- al quran
this is my belief and wish you the best for your dreams

Just go for it, push at least until you launch into the market and get the first feedback. You can take it from there but whatever you do just launch :)

Hey Omar. Sorry to hear you went through the emotions

But I actually don't think it's a problem. Any growing market is going to have a lot of competitors.

The only way to stand out is to execute on your own & properly position the product in such a way that it becomes different

Another good point as others mention is that competitors signal a market where there's growing demand.

I started building my own product Famewall in a market with a lot of competition but still managed to get paying customers but it took a month for me to nail the positioning

If the idea is sound, then the market probably has room for more than one competitor. The pie is probably bigger than you think. But please, don't burn yourself out.

1. Having a competitor that is new in the market is not a validation.
2. Two companies making the same product will end up with different results everytime. There are hundreds of CRMs. If there is enough room in the market then there is room for another like you.
3. If they got funded in a huge market space, with a few customers, you can get funded as well. I would go there if indie hacking is not a life style choice which I completely respect.

I have a few blog posts I update once in a while about bootstrapping and self funding. https://tzahifadida.com/

I can handle it technically, I believe I'm competent enough as a developer to handle the project.

Never forget that!

There is always room for competition. It is a good thing. Most IH projects are in heavily competitive niches.

With the ads: maybe there are more organic ways to promote?

@omsharp

"I feel bitter, angry, envious, depressed, burned out, and I'm not pleased with myself for feeling so."

Allow yourself to feel such emotions, there is nothing wrong with that. But, give yourself a deadline to move on productively, whatever move on means for you: continue working on your solution, working on something else, you name it.

STAY HARD.

Dude! You just got your idea validated! That is great news!!!

My thoughts on this matter are fairly succinct. I think it's good when there is competition for a particular idea. It is proof that there is a demand for it.

Second, I want you to use their product to get data for your research on what customers desire and how they use particular features. The new features they are developing can also be used for user feedback experiments. You could develop what your customers actually want and make savings thanks to it.

You may need to start looking for funding from investors if you don't have enough resources or money to put this plan into action.

Stop looking at and worrying about what they do. Start there and focus on what you can control-your idea and work. Do that and let the chips fall where they may. There is no idea that is new under the Sun. Everything you thought about, no matter how genius or brilliant the idea is, someone else , somewhere in this world has already thought about it. Good luck!

If you're really depressed, like seriously, check out Jordan Peterson's videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsSV3wVN_yE

But what you describe with the product happens to founders all the time. May as well get used to this and learn from this experience. Get smarter with validating your idea before embarking on implementing it. I've seen startup founders who interviewed 100 prospects about their idea before going for it.

Try to differentiate, try to find a niche where the competitor is not focusing. That could really help if you decide to continue. You need to have a plan.

With conversions, statistically you get a percentage of conversions, so 10% of people who saw the add click on ads, 10% of those who clicked on the ad convert, and 10% of those who convert will turn into real customers so they are probably getting a small percentage—10% may be a high estimate.

It's 10% of 10% of 10%. Out of those who saw ads, like 0.001% will be actual customers so even if they are running ads, scaling faster, i'd focus on customer experience. Slow and steady wins the race.

Hi Omar. 5 years ago i started a thing and competitors quickly came up. Some would even contact me pretending to be leads so i'd give them information. Anyway, it was a small thing but it made me very worried and, despite some initial success, i ended up not growing that business because i thought it was a possible fad and competition would be tough. Now, in retrospect, i see my worries were the only problem. Competition barely improved, it wasn't a fad and i could have well made that business my main income and way out of poverty. All i had to do was to niche down and stand my ground. Be the best at one particular aspect of that business to one particular segment of the audience. But because i had an "all or nothing" mentality, i couldn't accept the possibility of "being small". So, what i'm saying is... don't be concerned about what your competitors are doing, but be super concerned about the people you may serve. Their needs and desires. Less about you, less about your business, less about your competitors. More attention to your customers. Do it for them. Good luck 🏄‍♀️

Hey Omar. What is your definition of success as a bootstrapper? Most likely is to be able to pay the bills (and more) from your projects. If that is true, it does not really matter what the project is, as long as you are passionate about it. Don't be too attached to your ideas. With that said, it's completely normal to have competitors, you just need to find your USP (unique selling point) that differentiates your product from your competitors.
If you are looking for some extra support have a look into the WBE Space we are all indie makers and we support each other while building our projects.

This is a very good sign! A competitor growing fast means your idea is working and possible. It is much worse when you spend much time on a project that finally isn't working.
I agree with the comments below: now you know what to do and how to push the product since it is working.
Don't stop! 🚀