If I discover a company who already solves my problem, am I wasting my time developing a similar solution?
Let's say I've come up with an idea for a potential side hustle, I did some initial discovery and couldn't find a company solving the problem.
So I started development and after a few weeks, I came across a company that is well established and solving the problem. They aren't doing exactly the same as what I was planning, but it's along the same lines.
Should I give up and find another problem to solve, or should I continue and try to produce a different solution that customers may prefer?
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Discovering an established competitor is not a reason to abandon your project.
Quite the contrary in fact - as it proves people are willing to pay for a solution to the problem you are addressing.
Your questions should be more around how you will compete.
A recommendation for indiehackers is to niche down, meaning target a particular segment of the market.
If you can identify part of the market that is poorly/inadequately supported by current solutions then you should have a way in.
This is spot on.
Every competitor has their naysayers.
Try to figure out where your newly found competitor is dropping the ball. Find existing users that are unhappy with some part of the product and bridge the gap.
Figure out who they are, why they're unhappy, and what they value the most. Optimize in their direction, and (importantly) make the transition to your product simple and straightforward.
It can be as simple as leveraging your existing product, but fine tuning your messaging and optimizing towards a smaller "sub-market".
Build your brand around serving the needs of the much smaller market and test, test, test.
There are tens of thousands of different CRMs out there despite there being behemoths like Salesforce and HubSpot that solve the problem well.
These smaller CRMs flourish and succeed in spite of this because they've niched down and they solve a specific problem even better (e.g. a CRM focused on the issues a commercial real estate developer might face, for example).
This same story plays out everywhere in every product niche. The key is to analyze, hypothesize (i.e. here is how I can differentiate), optimize, and test your assumptions. Rinse and repeat, over and over.
What kind of product is it? B2B? B2C?
As an Indie Hacker, you could probably just launch the same product in a different geographical region and do sales there, for example.
Seeing another company successfully doing the same thing as you is the first sign of validation!
In fact, it is all the more reason for you to continue working on your idea. If someone is also building it, it means that there is a market for it.
Go for it!
Finding a competitor is one less work for you which is validating the idea, you get the answer to the question that people actually do need this product.
If having a competitor meant giving up we wouldn’t have eBay, Apple, UPS, Nike, Airbus etc… which are all huge companies now getting a share of what their competitors would have had for themselves.
No company is perfect and no company pleases every one that has an issue so these big companies have a lot that they have to work on, so if you find that weakness you can squeeze into the market, get some traction it could be “better customer service” it could be “better design”, “easy of use”, simple things make a difference, but you must understand the market to really understand the people, get feedback, look at their feedback look on the company’s reviews see what the biggest issues are for customers.
For example, If spirit charges $80 from fll to Baltimore and Southwest charges $100, I’m choosing southwest, why? Because southwest gives 2 checked bags free.. I choose southwest for convenience because I’m traveling with a lot of luggages. However if I need to make a quick trip to Baltimore by myself not even for the whole day, In that case I’m choosing Spirit, at that point I don’t care about free luggage I care about fare and getting to my destination. Spirit flies in the same sky as southwest, and will arrive the same time or faster.
So competition gives people the chance to choose and have convenience. Your company could be the one people go to when they need something cheaper, temporary, permanent, newer, older, more expensive, higher quality, for teenagers, for moms, for retired nurses etc..
Well said👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
It is best to find out if their customers are satisfied with the solution and if you can improve it. Also try and figure out why you didn't know of them before you started building. Is is because of lack of marketing or is the problem too niche?
I think there is a couple of reasons why I didn't find them:
if there are competitors there is a market, it is a good sign that you can make money.
That is the reason why positioning is so important, you need to differentiate yourself and look for those Insights that make you superior to your competition, that the client perceives that you are better than the competition.
The value matrix can help you see what features your user is most interested in and how to differentiate yourself from the competition.
I think distribution/reach should not be neglected. The core functionalities are the same, but user experience, language support, payment options...factors change the game for you.
I believe if you can just add 1 new feature or basically you have just 1 differentiating factor, go for it. Not an expert but I see this everyday everywhere
You've said yourself that they aren't doing the same thing, so what is the exact difference then? Frankly, there wasn't anything new in the world. A big difference starts from small changes addressing a different problem for different people.
Since it's a side project and you're already working on it, try to continue it and see how the community reacts to your product. Gather feedback and decide if you should improve it later on.
I definitely disagree. There are many metric's to compete on and just excelling in one other variable might give you an edge :) Press on my brother!
As others have mentioned, that others exist means they or someone else has established to at least some potential customers that a problem exists that needs a solution. If you have to do that yourself, you have an additional set of complications to overcome.
It isn't just about the problem, but the quality, price and convenience of the solution.
There are a lot of mature market spaces that nonetheless, have room for competitors. For example, I sell a database management product called Valentina Studio. The market is packed with free, subscription and web service solutions, but a useful solution that differentiates itself in a broad and mature market can prosper. You have to take that into account though in competitive marketing.
I can also add that marketing and brand positioning can make the already existing product feel like something else.
“Notion.so for gamers” is an example of a service but with a different positioning that could possibly attract a different audience.
Nah, that's a good sign. It tells you there is money to be made. If no one else is doing it, that most likely means they've already tried and scrapped it before you showed up. Or, there is something they know that you don't. It's very unlikely that companies in this niche (and adjacent niches) have simply never had the same idea as you.
Most of the successful startups I've work on had a lot of competition in the market already when they launched. I think the key is bringing a unique passion/skill/perspective to the problem to solve it in a way customers aren't getting with the other solutions. If you can't solve their problem in some way that's better than what they have now I'd move on to a problem that you can. Obsess about the customers and their problems though not the competitors. Competitors come and go but the problems remain.
I am in the same if not Worse situation at the moment. I started a platform that is already being doninated by a big player, i almost Feel like stopping everyday but for some reason i keep going. My personal take on this is you can monitor them closely and build up on their weaknesses, read reviews and everything you can find. You have to offer your services at a lower price, kind of over deliver at a lower price just to Get enough users/ customers. You may be similar but find a clear distinction separating you from them and build on thatZ Try everything possible before you quit. Competition will always be there,Even if you start something new, you are not guaranteed there will be no competition already there or closely behind you with superior tricks. Goodluck and dont give up just yet!
This comment was deleted a year ago.
True, but competing with established (and well-funded) brands is hard. VERY hard.
Building a product for a market that doesn't exist is even harder.
It is all a game of chances. We all here have 0.0% chance of winning against Nike, or Ford or Sony. But we do have a small chance of building a gizmo that the world have never seen before.
Not a chance. It is mainly about strategy. Chance plays a role, sure. Everything is chance when you look at it that way.
When you think you can't win against a goliath, think about how Red Bull penetrated the hell out of the soft drinks market.
Not sure Red Bull is a good example. They did not just create another soda. They pioneered a new category - energy drinks.
It is a great example. It is another soda (i.e. coloured water with sugar). Just with another name. And nobody thinks you can compare it to Coke. That's branding genius there.
Like Disney vs. Netflix?
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As a self-starter you have no chance to work harder than a big company. They will out-execute you in 100/100 cases.
If you try to compete with them product vs product, yes, most likely. However, a small company or solpreneur have two advantages over larger companies that will almost certainly never go away:
Large companies will only go after products or services that are worth their time. Google, Nike or whatever, may identify the same opportunity in the market as you have, but simply deem that the potential ROI is not worth their time. Large companies want either to capture a large market, or have a product that can sell at large volumes at profit. They won't bother if the market is smaller or if the volume isn't big enough to make a difference in their bottom line.
You can iterate much faster when you are small. All large companies have tons of red tape to go through before making changes to additions to a product, for good reason, but it allows for smaller players to move much much faster, even if your product has issues, you can outpace the larger ones, for a while.
Not necessarily true. That's why I advise on every freaking thread about niching down to the bare minimum. You can find a microniche that nobody else cares about that would be able to sustain you (and maybe a couple other people).
Success breeds inertia. Any leader can be dethroned at the right time with the right play. It is mainly about understanding the market forces.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
this a great comment.