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Ask HN: What is the best way to find out about competition for an idea?

3 points by marknutter ↗ HN
I know that it's a pretty common desire on HN and in the startup community to find out what competition exists for a particular idea, but I don't know of any fool-proof ways of going about it. You can use a combination of startup indexes like Angelist.com and Techcrunch's Crunchbase, search through HN of course, and browse the app stores, but it's very easy to not find out about competition for a long time even employing these tactics. Does there exist one all-encompassing resource or directory that makes it easy to vet an idea?

4 comments

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jchin
What has really worked for my co-founder and me is to talk to potential customers. Basically, once we start asking questions, our potential customers inevitably start saying things like, "Well, we tried this company...." or "Have you heard about this other company...."

I think this yields great up-to-date information. Sometimes directories can be horribly out of date and irrelevant.

[dead] youngdev
I guess the next question is, how do you find "potential customers"? :)
matmann2001
Just pitch your idea to everyone you know. Trust me, they'll tell you who's already done it, and who you're competing with.