This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 16 Nov 2008, by Joel Liu.
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16 Nov 08
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I recently came up with an idea for a web app that I've been getting pretty excited about. I've been spending the last couple of weeks doing research and today discovered that another company is already executing the idea. Not only are they executing it, but they're doing a pretty good job of it.
How important do you consider the originality of an idea to be? I have decided to embrace my variations on the idea, the size of the market, and go ahead with developing it.
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We used it as a basis for solving disagreements. Whenever we couldn't agree or decide what to do, we just say "what is our competitor doing?" It isn't about copying per se, it's about keeping momentum and getting past decision problems.
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The general idea doesn't need to be original at all. There was search before Google, social networks before facebook, video before YouTube, etc.
Sometimes the specifics of the idea can be important though. For example, take Google: lets use hyperlink data to rank websites
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Truly original ideas are terrible things to base products on. It takes people a vary long time to accept things that are actually revolutionary.
Instead, its often better to just take something familiar and make it better or adapt it for a certain niche. Make an ipod, not a segway.
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We like to believe in creation, but what's actually happening is evolution, not creation. Original ideas are like genetic mutations of old ideas and are not strong enough to survive and win.
I think that the strongest ideas are never really original, they are just better implementations of the existing ones.
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Incredibly, emphatically, overwhelmingly unimportant. In fact, I would say that if your idea was truly original, that would be extremely worrying from a business standpoint.
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If they're doing a good job of it more or less the way you'd be doing it, bail. You want to be crusading for your future users, saving them from the crap they would have to put up with if you weren't helping them. If you don't think you are making a big difference for your users, you won't have the necessarily inner fire to win.
Ideally you do a startup where other companies are doing something badly, their users hate them, and they still make money.
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As you're coding you'll definitely do things differently. You can even learn from your competitors mistakes, because you can regard their product as your "prototype". And because you have a competitor you can be pretty sure there is a market and (potential) customers. This is a good thing.
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That being said, being able to do something differently matters. Especially if you are in a niche market, it is much more difficult to get and keep traction without first-mover advantage.
Innovation in the way you will get traffic is one of the ways to distinguish yourself. If you are a paid service, consider integrating better commission/affiliate systems. They work.
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I consider it a kind of validation of an idea to see that other people are working on the same thing, but I know how you feel. It depends on your product and market, but I think there's pretty much always room for more than one success story.
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My experience: I began with one concept that seemed really cool to me, I did a little research and saw things vaguely similar, but they didn't get "my" idea (fortunately for me, I didn't find the several attempts that did get my idea). But as I began executing, I hit a roadblock - something that really spoiled my idea, made it impossible to realize the cool vision properly. I asked around, dejectedly, and someone suggested I look at how an unrelated project solved that particular problem - I did that and found the solution! But then bizarre twist 1: through doing this, I came to realize that the "unrelated project" was really doing exactly the same thing as me - just in a different sense. I would not have seen this connection (and did not) until I was intimidate with the details (i.e. was at a new vantage point). Bizarre twist 2: the title of my project perfectly described both my old conception and my new conception, although I could not see this ambiguity til after the journey.
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Also, consider that if that German hadn't invented the automobile, Ford still would have. i.e. Ford wasn't inspired by that German, because he was already working on an automobile. His autobiography is very good: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt*
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