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Ask HN: Entering a highly saturated market with the new business

3 points by smikhanov 17y ago

I have a side project for some time now (cloud communications thing) and for me it seems pretty mature (well, mature for two-people project) at the moment. I would like to give it more publicity, i.e. gain customers, and maybe talk to investors. The market I'm targeting is pretty saturated now -- smaller companies like Sipgate and giants like Google (with Google Voice) all present there. I would not compete with Google, but I would try to launch in the countries where Google Voice is not available yet to get the share of the hype results. In those places I have to compete with smaller locals. Smaller locals are usually basing their services on the hardware solutions (meaning no new services could be launched quickly, functionality is limited and innovation is restrained); our approach is pure software. As a small team we implemented the bare minimum of the needed functionality, so despite the fundamental advantage we potentially have (their vendor-locked hardware vs. our open software) no market advantages are visible to the customers yet. What would you do in this situation? Release anyway, even if the product now hardly could compete? Try to find investors and deliver more functionality? Anything else? Thanks for the advice.

kynikos 17y ago
If you're set on foreign markets, and have enough local expertise, it seems like you guys may have better chances of commercial success by partnering with existing telco's or established firms in your target countries. They probably don't have the in-house technical capability to stay competitive with market behemoths like Google and are looking for cost-effective ways to get their feet into a new area. (you were vague about what your product actually is so it's hard to know if any of this is true.) I'm saying this based on a few assumptions about your business... 1. There's a cultural disconnect between you and your customers and there are various barriers to import 2. You have no idea how to price this 3. There is political/legislative concerns (working in telecom myself, I know there are plenty of legal barriers) 4. You need the local skills, resources, and distribution of existing firms.

3 points by smikhanov 17y ago

kynikos 17y ago

If you're set on foreign markets, and have enough local expertise, it seems like you guys may have better chances of commercial success by partnering with existing telco's or established firms in your target countries. They probably don't have the in-house technical capability to stay competitive with market behemoths like Google and are looking for cost-effective ways to get their feet into a new area. (you were vague about what your product actually is so it's hard to know if any of this is true.) I'm saying this based on a few assumptions about your business... 1. There's a cultural disconnect between you and your customers and there are various barriers to import 2. You have no idea how to price this 3. There is political/legislative concerns (working in telecom myself, I know there are plenty of legal barriers) 4. You need the local skills, resources, and distribution of existing firms.