3 ms·

You're not competing with that other person, you're competing with nobody knowing you exist and nobody caring you exist. All the people who know both products

You're not competing with that other person, you're competing with nobody knowing you exist and nobody caring you exist. All the people who know both products exist .... is probably just you. If your company fails it'll definitely be because of what you did, not what they do. If your company succeeds it'll - almost - definitely have nothing to do with anything the other company did.

jondubois 10y ago
Yes, if the other company raised funding, there is no way you can compete with that. The same thing happened to me many years ago; I was working on an open source drag-and-drop content management system and I had built the whole thing - Thinking back; it was actually quite good but then, just as I was about to start monetizing; Weebly, Yola, Wix and a bunch of others just came out of nowhere will tons of funding and I had no choice but to give up. You just can't compete with VC money. You have 2 options; raise VC money or give up and go work for IBM instead; they have a nice cubicle waiting for you.
- bdcravens 10y ago
  > Yes, if the other company raised funding, there is no way you can compete with that. > go work for IBM instead; they have a nice cubicle waiting for you I know you're projecting your own frustration, but I think you built a product, not a company. Depending on your mixture of customers, service (not necessarily the same thing as the product), and narrative, it's quite possible to remain very competitive. (The company I work for, which was bootstrapped, is very competitive despite funded competitors)
- alain94040 10y ago
  Even if the competitor offers your product for free, you can still beat them on quality, support, ease of use, etc. A lot of potential customers are willing to pay for convenience. And of course, the likelihood that your average customer even knows there are two competing solutions is low. It all boils down to: be better than your competition. Price is not the only factor.
  - stevekemp 10y ago
    Yeah one way to go is to simplify complexity, something I guess the wix/weebly folks did for the average non-technical person who wanted a website. I wrap/resell Route53 DNS hosting from Amazon, and while I don't have millions of customers I think I gain from flat-pricing, and a less complicated webconsole/interface. I still require technical clients (who can use git), but I don't require dealing with credentials and AWS tools.
jakobegger 10y ago
I agree 100%. I make a living selling a database client I've developed over the last couple of years. In that time, a few other products showed up in the same space, ranging from free apps to venture funded SaaS, but it didn't seem to affect my revenue. My revenue went up when I released a major new version or added important features. But the release of a competing free app -- nobody seemed to care about that.

jondubois 10y ago

Yes, if the other company raised funding, there is no way you can compete with that. The same thing happened to me many years ago; I was working on an open source drag-and-drop content management system and I had built the whole thing - Thinking back; it was actually quite good but then, just as I was about to start monetizing; Weebly, Yola, Wix and a bunch of others just came out of nowhere will tons of funding and I had no choice but to give up. You just can't compete with VC money. You have 2 options; raise VC money or give up and go work for IBM instead; they have a nice cubicle waiting for you.

bdcravens 10y ago
> Yes, if the other company raised funding, there is no way you can compete with that. > go work for IBM instead; they have a nice cubicle waiting for you I know you're projecting your own frustration, but I think you built a product, not a company. Depending on your mixture of customers, service (not necessarily the same thing as the product), and narrative, it's quite possible to remain very competitive. (The company I work for, which was bootstrapped, is very competitive despite funded competitors)
alain94040 10y ago
Even if the competitor offers your product for free, you can still beat them on quality, support, ease of use, etc. A lot of potential customers are willing to pay for convenience. And of course, the likelihood that your average customer even knows there are two competing solutions is low. It all boils down to: be better than your competition. Price is not the only factor.
- stevekemp 10y ago
  Yeah one way to go is to simplify complexity, something I guess the wix/weebly folks did for the average non-technical person who wanted a website. I wrap/resell Route53 DNS hosting from Amazon, and while I don't have millions of customers I think I gain from flat-pricing, and a less complicated webconsole/interface. I still require technical clients (who can use git), but I don't require dealing with credentials and AWS tools.

jakobegger 10y ago

I agree 100%. I make a living selling a database client I've developed over the last couple of years. In that time, a few other products showed up in the same space, ranging from free apps to venture funded SaaS, but it didn't seem to affect my revenue. My revenue went up when I released a major new version or added important features. But the release of a competing free app -- nobody seemed to care about that.