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Everybody knows that building a competitor is not the hard part. Elon could build and own 100% a competitor to Twitter for much less than the 3 billion he spen

by Jyaif 5y ago

Everybody knows that building a competitor is not the hard part. Elon could build and own 100% a competitor to Twitter for much less than the 3 billion he spent to get 9% of twitter. The problem is getting the competitor to have traction. For that you need to have the idea for a differentiator that will hook people, and unlike engineering talent you can't buy this!

ShamelessC 5y ago
Well yeah, you have to actually compete in a competition. Seems pedantic to me.
kertoip_1 5y ago
> The problem is getting the competitor to have traction The mere fact that the platform belongs to him can help a lot
- dagw 5y ago
  Truth Social launched with a real differentiating message compared to Twitter that appeals to a lot of people, had massive media coverage and is fronted by one of the most prolific and famous Twitter users in history. Yet by all accounts it has effectively zero traction.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    As I've said elsewhere, it has the PVP MMO problem: it needs a supply of victims. It's no fun shouting at each other in an echo chamber.
ctvo 5y ago
> Everybody knows that building a competitor is not the hard part. Everybody knows this? Truth Social needs to be told. The app can barely launch, and got a head start forking Mastadon as far as we know. They have hundreds of millions (a few billion?) in capitalization. Everyone knows people who haven’t actually tried tend to underestimate the difficulty in other’s work. To be clear, nowhere did I say the engineering is the hardest part.
- riffic 5y ago
  masto, not masta.
Alex3917 5y ago
> For that you need to have the idea for a differentiator that will hook people, and unlike engineering talent you can't buy this! I have an entire bookshelf of books about how to do this, but I’ve never been asked about it during a coding interview. I think it's less of "you can't buy it" and more of that no one values it.
- hderms 5y ago
  What are your favorite books along that line?
  - Alex3917 5y ago
    That's hard to answer because there are so many different types of books. E.g. I like this one a lot, it's basically a summary of the most important academic papers about what makes online communities successful: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities-Evidence-Based/dp/0262528916 https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communitie... But I also like Seth Godin's books a lot, e.g. All Marketers Are Liars, Free Prize Inside, and Purple Cow. A lot of my reading on web stuff has been vaguely in those categories though, in terms of either academic research, academic theory, digital ethnography stuff, psychology and sociology, marketing theory/praxis, plus whatever I've read on design and UX. I would say the single book that founders in the tech industry would benefit from reading the most is probably Punished By Rewards by Alfie Kohn. I feel like every other startup puts themselves out of business by fucking up on the super basic things that book discusses. I end up having to explain it to people all the time.

by Jyaif 5y ago

ShamelessC 5y ago

Well yeah, you have to actually compete in a competition. Seems pedantic to me.

kertoip_1 5y ago

> The problem is getting the competitor to have traction The mere fact that the platform belongs to him can help a lot

dagw 5y ago
Truth Social launched with a real differentiating message compared to Twitter that appeals to a lot of people, had massive media coverage and is fronted by one of the most prolific and famous Twitter users in history. Yet by all accounts it has effectively zero traction.
- pjc50 5y ago
  As I've said elsewhere, it has the PVP MMO problem: it needs a supply of victims. It's no fun shouting at each other in an echo chamber.

ctvo 5y ago

> Everybody knows that building a competitor is not the hard part. Everybody knows this? Truth Social needs to be told. The app can barely launch, and got a head start forking Mastadon as far as we know. They have hundreds of millions (a few billion?) in capitalization. Everyone knows people who haven’t actually tried tend to underestimate the difficulty in other’s work. To be clear, nowhere did I say the engineering is the hardest part.

riffic 5y ago
masto, not masta.

Alex3917 5y ago

> For that you need to have the idea for a differentiator that will hook people, and unlike engineering talent you can't buy this! I have an entire bookshelf of books about how to do this, but I’ve never been asked about it during a coding interview. I think it's less of "you can't buy it" and more of that no one values it.

hderms 5y ago
What are your favorite books along that line?
- Alex3917 5y ago
  That's hard to answer because there are so many different types of books. E.g. I like this one a lot, it's basically a summary of the most important academic papers about what makes online communities successful: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communities-Evidence-Based/dp/0262528916 https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communitie... But I also like Seth Godin's books a lot, e.g. All Marketers Are Liars, Free Prize Inside, and Purple Cow. A lot of my reading on web stuff has been vaguely in those categories though, in terms of either academic research, academic theory, digital ethnography stuff, psychology and sociology, marketing theory/praxis, plus whatever I've read on design and UX. I would say the single book that founders in the tech industry would benefit from reading the most is probably Punished By Rewards by Alfie Kohn. I feel like every other startup puts themselves out of business by fucking up on the super basic things that book discusses. I end up having to explain it to people all the time.