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You mean you could make a YouTube clone in a weekend? It's easy to fall into this way of thinking. But hey, maybe you will build the next Screenhero, or TeamVie

by zpr 9y ago

You mean you could make a YouTube clone in a weekend? It's easy to fall into this way of thinking. But hey, maybe you will build the next Screenhero, or TeamViewer. Or maybe you'll end up as one of the thousands of other versions of this nobody has ever heard of. The idea is usually not the hard part.

derefr 9y ago
No, but you can probably build YouTube in two years. (Yes, including their global CDN.) Also, “exact replacement for killed product” is a realy good advertising pitch to differentiate from those thousand other versions. It worked for The Old Reader, and later Feedly, when Google Reader was killed.
kjksf 9y ago
I mean that you can make a Screenhero clone in approximately the same amount of time that it took to write it originally. Should be a bit less because straight path (cloning) is shorter than twisty one (things that Screenhero did that did not end up in the final product). Note that by the time of Slack acquisition Screenhero was approaching v2.0, they had product out far longer than that. So it's not unreasonable to say you could do a v1 of similar product in a year. Both idea and execution are hard. Cloning existing idea removes one hard part, therefore increasing the chances of success. Look at Excel, Word or Baidu or Sina Weibo. As to "thousands of other versions of this": you would have to point to at least one. It's hard to argue against imaginary products. Based on this thread for many people Screenhero has no acceptable substitute.
- zpr 9y ago
  I can agree that when you have clearly defined business goals its easier to spit out a product. And I'm not arguing that you could make something similar to Screenhero in a year -- the hard part would be to distinguish it from the thousands of others. You could find examples with some Googling (remote desktop software, screen sharing software): GoToMeeting, Join.me, LogMeIn/Hamachi, RealVNC, not to mention built in RDC in Windows, etc. Those are just the famous/obvious ones. If you kept digging, I'm sure you could easily find hundreds if not thousands of similar solutions. I understand they're slightly different from one another, and I suppose its possible all the commenters here went through each and every one of these options and found nothing useable but it seems unlikely to me, and similarly unlikely the +1 one would make in this pool would be any sort of revolutionary "game changer" VCs would mob onto. The space seems well-established or dare I say it "saturated".
fragmede 9y ago
If you made $5 million but nobody would ever know about it, or who you are, would you make a YouTube clone? You're right that the idea is the easy part. Still, there are a number of TeamViewer clones, ranging from terrible to pretty good. They may not have the same brand recognition but TeamViewer is quite expensive and not everyone is willing to pay top dollar.

by zpr 9y ago

derefr 9y ago

No, but you can probably build YouTube in two years. (Yes, including their global CDN.) Also, “exact replacement for killed product” is a realy good advertising pitch to differentiate from those thousand other versions. It worked for The Old Reader, and later Feedly, when Google Reader was killed.

kjksf 9y ago

I mean that you can make a Screenhero clone in approximately the same amount of time that it took to write it originally. Should be a bit less because straight path (cloning) is shorter than twisty one (things that Screenhero did that did not end up in the final product). Note that by the time of Slack acquisition Screenhero was approaching v2.0, they had product out far longer than that. So it's not unreasonable to say you could do a v1 of similar product in a year. Both idea and execution are hard. Cloning existing idea removes one hard part, therefore increasing the chances of success. Look at Excel, Word or Baidu or Sina Weibo. As to "thousands of other versions of this": you would have to point to at least one. It's hard to argue against imaginary products. Based on this thread for many people Screenhero has no acceptable substitute.

zpr 9y ago
I can agree that when you have clearly defined business goals its easier to spit out a product. And I'm not arguing that you could make something similar to Screenhero in a year -- the hard part would be to distinguish it from the thousands of others. You could find examples with some Googling (remote desktop software, screen sharing software): GoToMeeting, Join.me, LogMeIn/Hamachi, RealVNC, not to mention built in RDC in Windows, etc. Those are just the famous/obvious ones. If you kept digging, I'm sure you could easily find hundreds if not thousands of similar solutions. I understand they're slightly different from one another, and I suppose its possible all the commenters here went through each and every one of these options and found nothing useable but it seems unlikely to me, and similarly unlikely the +1 one would make in this pool would be any sort of revolutionary "game changer" VCs would mob onto. The space seems well-established or dare I say it "saturated".

fragmede 9y ago

If you made $5 million but nobody would ever know about it, or who you are, would you make a YouTube clone? You're right that the idea is the easy part. Still, there are a number of TeamViewer clones, ranging from terrible to pretty good. They may not have the same brand recognition but TeamViewer is quite expensive and not everyone is willing to pay top dollar.