Ask HN: Is it bad to entertain an idea that has already been tried?

You'll never know until you try it...

Probably everything anyone on HN has thought on has been at least tried, in some cases successfully.

That doesn't mean you can't do it better.

If it took you time to find the other sites but you know how to market it, then I'd say it's not bad, go for it :)

I love building stuff. Its one of those guilty pleasures that consume my weekends. The truth about fun projects is that you can waste your life away working on them. I would recommend that you really think about this idea more. Maybe you could see yourself doing this for much longer than a weekend? Why not?

Here's a list of some ideas that were entertained despite already existing, and ended up wildly successful. Any of them sound familiar?

- Google ("Nah, who needs another search engine")

- Facebook (MySpace)

- Zappos (selling shoes, idea copied from a guy in 800BC)

In an exerpt from Felix Dennis' book 'How to Get Rich', he describes how ideas can't be patented, it's the execution behind it that matters.

Personally, none of my ideas are original. My only hope is to execute existing ideas better.

No. Anything can always be improved upon.

If you think the existing solutions suck and you know why they suck and you know how to build something better, by all means go for it.

If you don't really think they suck, or you don't really have an idea about why they suck, or don't really know how to make a better alternative, maybe you should reconsider ..

Its all in the implementation, not the idea. Its certainly worth giving it a shot if you can identify flaws in the original implementation.

Even if its only for fun, do it. I'll be incredibly surprised if you learn nothing from it, even if it fails.

Does it solve a problem for you? Is it a subset of something bigger you will face eventually anyway? Is it fun, actually?

Yes, if yes to any of the above. And regardless, implementing something that's been done already gives a huge advantage over the edge-of-existence startups--because you begin with at least two data points. What worked or failed before, and your own project state.

May learn more about the existing thing, and almost certainly have a clearer picture of your own relative progress.

A couple more successful examples: tumblr and posterous. Built by newcomers to the blogging crowd, brought nothing new except for a better implementation. Meanwhile vox.com from Six Apart shut down. There are also a ton of social book reading sites. Goodreads is growing the fastest, even though it launched considerably later than LibraryThing (which was the first major one). Shelfari was acquired by Amazon.

Why do you care to judge an abstraction of another abstraction? How about judging the idea itself?

Lots of innovative projects failed because they hit too early, when the market or the technology weren't ready yet. There were dozens of sites like Groupon back in 2000. Tablet computing has been around for 30 years, and it almost hit the mainstream with Palm, only to languish again, until Steve Jobs decided it was time to tackle it.

Besides, there aren't crowded markets. There are just markets you haven't segmented enough yet. http://www.ericsink.com/laws/Law_02.html

Pardon the short answer, but simply:

No, its not bad at all. A. google B. Facebook

A bad idea? I would say its quite the opposite. Just look at it this way--your market research is essentially done for you.

If there are existing businesses with the same idea, who are their customers? What iterations did they go through to reach product/market fit? How are they vulnerable?

If there's currently no one profiting from this idea...well, why the hell isn't there? Did someone raise some cash, get a bunch of press, but ultimately fail to execute? Awesome, you now know what not to do.

The general idea behind all of this is that you need not worry too much about the competition at this point. Learn from it, sure. But please don't let it discourage you from even trying. Good luck!