Ask HN: What should you do ?

5 points by blacklife 16y ago ↗ HN

Time and again you get such questions! I was working on a feasibility and use case of an indea since past 2 months, fighting with myself if it was valid problem and people would use it. I see today 2 startups have popped up. Should I just discard the idea or should I still go ahead ?

3 comments

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cmelbye 16y ago ↗

I'm wondering that too. I had an idea, and then I saw that a startup recently sprung up with some pretty big names on board. Not sure if I should go forward with it or discard it.

fungi 16y ago ↗

Guess it depends on the time you have on your hands, the work involved and the quality of the competition.

If you have worked on it to some extent already then it seems like a waste to not at least release the code.

Vandy_Travis 16y ago ↗

This isn't a one size fits all type question, or one that somebody can really give good advice on without knowing the details of the situation. Here's what I would ask myself: - is your market very diverse (e.g. is it very unlikely the new competitors can capture a dominant share?) - is your market large? - do you believe you can supply something more than your competitors?

eventually, those questions should be used as input to the real question: can you still run your business successfully, or does getting beat to market by the competition prevent you from executing?