when Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic there were other formidable competitors already in the game. His market research consisted of a phone call to book

when Richard Branson started Virgin Atlantic there were other formidable competitors already in the game. His market research consisted of a phone call to book a trans atlantic flight with British Airways. After holding the line for half an hour without getting through he concluded that either their customer service sucked in which case he could do better, or there were so many people wanting to fly across the atlantic that they clogged up the phones in which case there would be plenty of customers for him. The point is that businessplans, market research and information gathering on competitors is not as good a use of your time as simply trying it out. You don't need to be first, or even best. You just need to put something out there and work with the feedback you get. Note that successful entreprensurs don't have better ideas than anyone else, they just have more of them and they do something about it. Which is why many of them have several failed ventures behind them. See Gabriel Weinberg's post that's on the frontpage right now for an example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803809 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803809 so just do it. Get something out there and show it to us.