One of the questions prospects ask us in meetings is "Company X does this with product Y" when we present our product and talk about a feature. One question I

One of the questions prospects ask us in meetings is "Company X does this with product Y" when we present our product and talk about a feature. One question I ask back is: "What is your experience with product Y? Do you use it?" The answer is invariably: "We don't use product Y." Many prospects tell us about products they don't use, and these prospects are in pain which would make you think that they'd use anything to relieve that pain but they don't. That's an important point. Many implementations surely exist and people are aware of them, but these implementations do not obliterate an important, costly, problem to dust. Does your implementation obliterate an important problem to dust? I disagree that there's nothing new under the sun. Sure, components may be the same, but so is guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine, yet these components make so very different creatures. I think your opinion is valuable, but getting more data is required: have you shown that project to your target audience? Do you have a simple use case. Just one thing that helps a user accomplish a task that would otherwise require time, skill, resources, or all of these? Talking with users is educational to say the least. In the past, we used to spend months on a feature that would go un-noticed, and the prospect would stop us mid-presentation, call colleagues to the room, and ask us about a feature we hacked together in a few hours. Some things matter to you, others matter. An extreme view that is of course nuanced in real life, but it can move the project forward more than ignoring it does.