Thanks for writing this. I’ve been considering trying a software startup at some point and I think your lessons from this will help me a lot. I’ve been considering doing something with RSS readers, since it’s a tool I use and I have experience working with other people on them, but I definitely need to (1) do some market research to make sure it’s even plausible that I could make money, (2) look into how to market it / whether I need a cofounder or if I could approach people who could help spread the word, and (3) if I do it, make sure I can come up with something fast that people could immediately use, since I was also leaning toward “do the same thing as the market leader but better”, and I think you’ve convinced me that that’s a scary place to go. I might plausibly be able to be better than the market leader _at one thing_ and then add more features though.
(I’m brendanlong on Slack by the way, so we’ve already talked about this but I still found the articles really interesting)
Thanks, it’s awesome to hear that you found it helpful!
I’m always down to talk more about the RSS reader idea. But yeah, I think 1, 2 and 3 are very good ideas.
As for the “do the same thing as the market leader but better” thing, I also feel skeptical about it now. There was a large period of time where people were telling me that they liked my product more than Flopzilla, and I was offering it for free, and I wasn’t getting users! I never would have expected that to happen.
That’s not to say that “do the same thing as the market leader but better” is always a bad idea, but I think it needs to be coupled with “and I have some good ideas about how to do customer acquisition” not “and once I do, I expect that users will just come”. For the latter, my thinking now is that you need to 10x your competitor or something, like the YC guys encourage you to do iirc.
Thanks for writing this. I’ve been considering trying a software startup at some point and I think your lessons from this will help me a lot. I’ve been considering doing something with RSS readers, since it’s a tool I use and I have experience working with other people on them, but I definitely need to (1) do some market research to make sure it’s even plausible that I could make money, (2) look into how to market it / whether I need a cofounder or if I could approach people who could help spread the word, and (3) if I do it, make sure I can come up with something fast that people could immediately use, since I was also leaning toward “do the same thing as the market leader but better”, and I think you’ve convinced me that that’s a scary place to go. I might plausibly be able to be better than the market leader _at one thing_ and then add more features though.
(I’m brendanlong on Slack by the way, so we’ve already talked about this but I still found the articles really interesting)
Thanks, it’s awesome to hear that you found it helpful!
I’m always down to talk more about the RSS reader idea. But yeah, I think 1, 2 and 3 are very good ideas.
As for the “do the same thing as the market leader but better” thing, I also feel skeptical about it now. There was a large period of time where people were telling me that they liked my product more than Flopzilla, and I was offering it for free, and I wasn’t getting users! I never would have expected that to happen.
That’s not to say that “do the same thing as the market leader but better” is always a bad idea, but I think it needs to be coupled with “and I have some good ideas about how to do customer acquisition” not “and once I do, I expect that users will just come”. For the latter, my thinking now is that you need to 10x your competitor or something, like the YC guys encourage you to do iirc.