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> I initially saw oh ok, there are a ton of people making these apps, it must be profitable. If you look at a dense market and decide to join in because you se
by bastawhiz 5y ago
> I initially saw oh ok, there are a ton of people making these apps, it must be profitable.
If you look at a dense market and decide to join in because you see potential profit because the market is dense, you're already destined for failure. Everyone else already has a head start, which means you need some sort of differentiating feature to be competitive.
Why would I pay for blog software that's half baked or doesn't offer anything new? Or a to-do list? Or time tracker? Or invoicing tool?
The author dances around this, but it honestly sounds like the product they built wasn't remarkably good or novel, and was positioned against incumbents that were plentiful and often had existing success. The failure here seems to be a lack of business plan beyond "join the pack and make money".
- kylebolt 5y agoI thought habits might be an interesting market to work in + using a chatbot as a novel approach but alas my approach did not pan out.
- bastawhiz 5y agoBut what about being a chat bot made it better? Being a chat bot doesn't make it do anything different than the competition, it's just a different interface. Being novel doesn't make it useful.
- asimjalis 5y agoI suspect there are niches that you could profitably target. For example eating habits. Or exercise habits. Or studying habits for preparing for an LSAT exam. In all of these cases the niche allows you to go much deeper with the product to address specific pain points. You can also go much deeper with your advertising and marketing strategy. You can also reach out to specific podcasts and to specific blogs for marketing exposure.