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Ask HN: Startup could be killed with a single feature?
Should I start a startup that could potentially be killed by a big corp if they implement the feature that my product is built on? Its a product based on a strong community around it, which is a plus, but still very risky.
- celticninja 8y agoHow much would it cost to launch? How fast could you recoup your investment?
- quotz 8y agoNot much at all. Could probably build the MVP in 2 months. But it could take a few years to build a community around it.
- ishjoh 8y agois there an additional thing that would make people stick around even if that other company built the feature? Seeing a feature that can make a big difference to people is a great place to start, if you can plan a road map that will help you to grow your user base, is even better.
- quotz 8y agoSo it lets people earn for a living from the platform, and the product is also build on a community, very different from the big corp competitor
- jxr006 8y agoi'm going to quote Sam. This doesn't sound like a business, sounds like a feature.
- tinktank 8y agoJobs told the dropbox guys that their product was a feature... go figure.
- saluki 8y agoMost startups could be killed with a single feature initially. If you're interested in working on it and have passion about it go for it. Most big corps have lots of layers/decision makers so chances are slim they would attack your feature before you have traction, users and a community built around it.
- allenleein 8y agoI think big corp rarely killed a startup. Some quotes from famous startup people: “In a big company, you can do what all the other big companies are doing. But a startup can’t do what all the other startups do. I don’t think a lot of people realize this, even in startups. The average big company grows at about ten percent a year. So if you’re running a big company and you do everything the way the average big company does it, you can expect to do as well as the average big company — that is, to grow about ten percent a year. The same thing will happen if you’re running a startup, of course. If you do everything the way the average startup does it, you should expect average performance. The problem here is, average performance means that you’ll go out of business.”- Paul Graham --- "What makes disruption so devastating is the fact that, absent a crisis, it is almost impossible to avoid. Managers are paid to leverage their advantages, not destroy them; to increase margins, not obliterate them." - Naval Ravikant --- Personally, I think if your business fits in a market design by someone else, you are “default dead”. Pepsi never catches Coke. Bing never catches Google. Google Pixel never catches iPhone. The real question is can you design a market that you can dominate. Ignore competition from big corp.