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If your business can be replaced so easily, then unfortunately what you have built is a feature, not a product.

rubbingalcohol 7y ago
RTFA
oldmanhorton 7y ago
Large tech companies have the resources to clone any single piece of software engineering or hardware engineering. The marginal cost of developing a new "feature" of their existing "product" is so small in the grand scheme of things. As long as you have software engineers, money, and an idea, you can make something like sidecar real; this company needed to create all three from scratch, Apple has oodles of the first two and can easily steal ideas for the third. With that being said, if the only definition of a product is something that Apple can't replicate, then I'm afraid we are damn near out of products. (Again, this applies to every large tech company, not just apple)
- lonelappde 7y ago
  You can make something that the big co doesn't want to make, like something user customizable.
  - toyg 7y ago
    Which is effectively what OP says in the blogpost: they will go on by offering more advanced features in the product that was more customizable.
- tjalfi 7y ago
  Large tech companies can replicate anything but it doesn't make sense for them to clone products sold in a small market. Legal operations software, for example, is about a 1 billion market[0]. Your startup can compete in this space but it's too small to be worth pursing for Microsoft. [0] https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/07/05/1878916/0/en/Global-Legal-Operations-Software-Market-Worth-Reach-USD-3-565-Million-By-2027-Zion-Market-Research.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/07/05/187891...
- threeseed 7y ago
  Companies can clone features not products. And they will only do so in a market that is core to them.
  - sombremesa 7y ago
    Companies do clone products though - see Amazon Basics.
theferalrobot 7y ago
That seems unnecessarily cheeky. If you can make money on it, its a product, if someone builds it in to their product line, perhaps they did it better (though not always).
- prepend 7y ago
  You can make money off many things that aren’t products. Pedantically we might be right that anything revenue is product, but I think it’s the difference between a real product and an add on that people only buy because hey are buying something else. The advice is useful because if I’m building a feature I will either be purchased by a product or eventually be added into a product.
  - theferalrobot 7y ago
    I can see what you are saying. Perhaps a third option of advice is being suggested here which is diversify your feature to make it better than a built in solution or diversify your business to make it resilient to these types of loss.
    - prepend 7y ago
      I think that’s a good strategy. As long as I’ve paid attention (85+) there have been “feature” companies selling addons and stuff on top of windows, Mac, Oracle, etc. I think the risk is thinking you are a product company when actually a feature company and then not diversifying.
dahart 7y ago
If what you have is a business that pays the teams salaries, then what you built is by definition a product, not a feature.
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
"Easily" in this case is a trillion dollar company throwing multiples of what you could without really blinking. Spending $10M worth of resources on a project within Apple is not even notable, meanwhile that's a healthy series A for a startup.
mthoms 7y ago
You're using this trope entirely out of context. There are only handful of companies (Google and FB come to mind) that make products for Apple's platform that Apple can't easily replicate itself.
damnyou 7y ago
Maybe the government should get in the way then.

RTFA

Large tech companies have the resources to clone any single piece of software engineering or hardware engineering. The marginal cost of developing a new "feature" of their existing "product" is so small in the grand scheme of things. As long as you have software engineers, money, and an idea, you can make something like sidecar real; this company needed to create all three from scratch, Apple has oodles of the first two and can easily steal ideas for the third. With that being said, if the only definition of a product is something that Apple can't replicate, then I'm afraid we are damn near out of products. (Again, this applies to every large tech company, not just apple)

lonelappde 7y ago
You can make something that the big co doesn't want to make, like something user customizable.
- toyg 7y ago
  Which is effectively what OP says in the blogpost: they will go on by offering more advanced features in the product that was more customizable.
tjalfi 7y ago
Large tech companies can replicate anything but it doesn't make sense for them to clone products sold in a small market. Legal operations software, for example, is about a 1 billion market[0]. Your startup can compete in this space but it's too small to be worth pursing for Microsoft. [0] https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/07/05/1878916/0/en/Global-Legal-Operations-Software-Market-Worth-Reach-USD-3-565-Million-By-2027-Zion-Market-Research.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/07/05/187891...
threeseed 7y ago
Companies can clone features not products. And they will only do so in a market that is core to them.
- sombremesa 7y ago
  Companies do clone products though - see Amazon Basics.

theferalrobot 7y ago

That seems unnecessarily cheeky. If you can make money on it, its a product, if someone builds it in to their product line, perhaps they did it better (though not always).

prepend 7y ago
You can make money off many things that aren’t products. Pedantically we might be right that anything revenue is product, but I think it’s the difference between a real product and an add on that people only buy because hey are buying something else. The advice is useful because if I’m building a feature I will either be purchased by a product or eventually be added into a product.
- theferalrobot 7y ago
  I can see what you are saying. Perhaps a third option of advice is being suggested here which is diversify your feature to make it better than a built in solution or diversify your business to make it resilient to these types of loss.
  - prepend 7y ago
    I think that’s a good strategy. As long as I’ve paid attention (85+) there have been “feature” companies selling addons and stuff on top of windows, Mac, Oracle, etc. I think the risk is thinking you are a product company when actually a feature company and then not diversifying.

dahart 7y ago

If what you have is a business that pays the teams salaries, then what you built is by definition a product, not a feature.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago

"Easily" in this case is a trillion dollar company throwing multiples of what you could without really blinking. Spending $10M worth of resources on a project within Apple is not even notable, meanwhile that's a healthy series A for a startup.

mthoms 7y ago

You're using this trope entirely out of context. There are only handful of companies (Google and FB come to mind) that make products for Apple's platform that Apple can't easily replicate itself.

damnyou 7y ago

Maybe the government should get in the way then.