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Ask HN: How do I take advantage of a competitor closing down?

24 points by jiaaro ↗ HN
I'm working on a startup that is based around the idea of uploading and sharing files for the purpose of collaboration (alpha release: http://esploded.com).

Facebook just bought and made plans to shut down one of the big players in this market (drop.io), which makes me think there is an opportunity here to pick up some of their users, send out press releases, or take advantage of this event in some way.

What are some of the ways a startup can capitalize on one of their bigger competitors abruptly closing up shop?

17 comments

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patio11
a) Blog post with the core keywords in the title, now.

b) Offer "Facebook refugees" a deal for migrating to your service. You can always extend it to everyone, too.

c) Play up the David v. Goliath angle to the hilt if you want PR.

stakent
d) Offer and show prominently clear and simple procedure and instruction to migrate user's data from closing competitor into your service
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jiaaro
To be honest I don't have a simple procedure for their power users. It's a one upload at at time interface (though I could offer an import function for users who are logged in I guess)

According to disruption theory (a la Thomas Thurston) I should be in ok shape at the moment - cheaper and worse ;)

I think offering an uploader/importer for those dropio dumps is probably a good idea for this weekend though huh?

prawn
Some people aren't really power users with accounts/files to migrate, but just need a solution to recommend to clients that have 2MB limits on their email accounts.
noahc
You need to offer an importer/uploader. If I had to pay more for a service that offered an uploader, I would. You have a few barriers you need to eliminate.

Trust/Reputation -- How can you get them to trust you after they've just be in an "abusive" relationship with drop.io?

Name Rec. -- How do you get them to know you exist. This tied to PR.

Time -- Reduce time needed to join your website vs others.

Money -- Sounds like you're cheaper.

So with an importer you have improved time and trust. You're already cheaper, so you need to do the PR side of it.

The only thing that might kill you is feature set depending on what users need/want. One advantage is that refugees know what features they actually use, not "Oh, I might need that some day so I'll go with this service"

TamDenholm
I'd perhaps try an adwords/facebook ad campaign directly targetting drop.io users.

Perhaps something along the lines of: "No more Drop.io? Let esploded take care of you."

Clearly i'm not an ad man but you get the idea, it might be worth trying to be cheeky and funny in the ads aswell.

chadaustin
Contact their employees and hire them. Many will still believe in the vision and want another crack at it.
cperciva
Be careful about this. It sounds like drop.io was dying before facebook bought it out, and the last thing you want to do is replicate their failure.

I'm not saying that this is automatically a bad idea; just be careful.

rosser
That just means they've already made at least some of the possible mistakes in such a venture, and on someone else's dime.
cperciva
Sure. The trick is to make sure that you recognize what the mistakes were and don't repeat them. (And if someone says "no, I can't think of any mistakes we made", don't hire them.)
jiaaro
That's a pretty interesting idea. Right now I'm in the "My Weekend Project" stage (I havn't even finished setting up paypal) but maybe at the very least, I could get advice from them?

What's a good way to ask? Do you think they'll be bound by NDAs etc?

netcan
Find complaining users that blog or twitter and contact them.
jiaaro
not a bad idea -> obviously not very scalable, but I've already engaged a couple of people on twitter. We'll see how it pans out
qeorge
Buy the AdWords, write blog posts, and tweet to reach their old members. Target your landing pages to ex-drop.io customers.

Offer an import tool.

Show how their old features map to yours (e.g., "What drop.io calls a drop, we call a workspace").

Emphasize that you're committed to the service long-term and won't shut down when the CEO gets a sweet job offer.

revorad
Contact the guys at drop.io directly and strike a deal.
andrewf
From this page, it looks like every drop.io user already has a magic key that they could copy and paste into a migration tool.

  http://dev.drop.io/
Assuming that their userbase is large enough for some percentage migrating to benefit you materially - consider building a migration wizard now.

This sounds like a talent acquisition - I doubt drop.io would be hostile to your poaching their about-to-be-ex customers. They may even be willing to suggest your tool to their users.