So I have built something that already exists...now what?
Well, it turns out that the project that I've been working on for the past few months in hopes of escaping my cube one day has complete feature parity with another company's product! In fact, not only does it have complete feature parity but the other company's product has all the features that I wanted to implement. The company in question is squareup.com.
Question is...what should I do? Should I try to out-innovate them? Or are they so far ahead of the game that I should move on and find something else? I think I see some room for innovation in this space still; however, they've got capital, man power, etc. and I don't.
As of now I have a prototype that's good enough to show off, basically, that could be grown in to a beta pretty easily. So I don't have a huge investment in terms of time at this point; however, starting over on something else sounds kinda scary...
Anyway, I'm only any good with the technology part of this stuff, still learning the business/management end. Any advice that you guys can pass along would be great!
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 56.6 ms ] threadthere's a good book on marketing strategy by some ex-microsoft guys that explains 3-5 standard market entry strategies. i suggest finding that. can't recall the name. has a picture of a football play on the cover i think. enjoy and good luck.
is the name of the book
On the other hand, I've been involved with enough startups to know that most of my attempts to commercialize my products will probably fail. So back to goals--you say yours is to escape your cube. Do you mean:
1. I want to escape the type of job that puts me in a cube.
2. I want to no longer work as a developer.
3. I want to no longer work--since I'm filthy rich.
Those span the gamut of goals and without knowing what you are really after, it's hard to give you advice on how to proceed. For the sake of adding some direct reply, let's assume it's #1 above. In that case, I'd say--keep honing your skills, demo your product and use it as a calling card for a job search with companies you think you'd be a fit with (maybe even Square). Don't bother the commercialization path and don't sweat the competition--since this is lateral to your goal of a better workplace--and a lot more achievable than a commercially successful startup.
Hope that helps.
Or rather evaluate how long it would take you to catch up with them (in their existing state) including the hardware part - acquiring it, stocking, selling, supporting, etc - and then see if you are willing to do that knowing that you will also need to out-market them. Then sit down and think about it. Realistically you are too late and you are too few. Think about it a bit more and then drop it.
I am confused. Your reddit post[1] had some really good suggestions and advice. What makes you think HN is less hive mind-ish than most other places? And what does hive-mind has to do with the topic?
I just think that point was in bad form. There are good and bad points of reddit community (just like any other online community), this example is not one of them.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/c9q1x/so_i_have_bu...
Also; the Square site is quite confusing and unclear. You could definitely outmanoeuvre them with some effort.
Eh? So when you say "parity" you actually mean they've got heaps of features that you don't?
My advice would be to look at the niche that they're trying to serve and attack it from another angle. They're a "everyone can use it to get paid" company, maybe you should focus even more specfically on shopkeepers or tradesmen?
This will at least let hundreds of people build their own readers, and potentially educate most of them in magnetic stripe encoding.
Alternatively/Additionally the Square reader is miles away from ergonomic and by having another design out there you can make a small profit by selling more reliable readers.
The real question is not "some one else is working on this, should I quit?" To me, the real question is "someone else is working on it, the problem is real and there is market demand - am I ready to do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to make this company successful?"
This looks like a phisher's dream to me.
Generally speaking, there's always room for more than one vendor, for any product or service. Even in the giant-dominated worlds of search and social networking there are plenty of smaller players who do well. If there is a market for something, there'll be room for several suppliers - perhaps many.
So, I wouldn't get disheartened. As others have said it's free market validation for you (assuming they have customers). So look at their customers - who they are, what's the use case for them, what value do they derive from it? How much do they pay? Answers to these and other questions will help you market your version more effectively.
The only issue is: can you deliver? Do you have the technical know-now to build this product (e.g what about the card-reader? security, customer data protection etc etc?). And do you have the resources / sales route to take it to market and get customers?
If you think you can build this and get it market, then great. Go for it. The competition will only force you to better your product, give you ideas and show you where the money is.
The one piece of advice I've got is to watch out for the business/regulation side. Dealing with the payment card networks is a seriously non-trivial problem.
What we're doing is focusing on one killer feature -- and addressing it in a way that none of our competitors do.
So, what's your killer feature? I would think hard about that, because that's what will differentiate yourself.
Once you have a beta product, I'd pick a geographic area and market there. Research the Yelp approach. They were very, very far from the first to market -- and had a unique approach to get a competitive edge.