Regarding the competition: if a competitor is doing a good job, but there are still customers out there waiting to be found, then replicating their technology a

Regarding the competition: if a competitor is doing a good job, but there are still customers out there waiting to be found, then replicating their technology and capturing that unfound part of the market would be a good idea. Try to get a feel for how many people want that product/service. See the following for links on the infamous parrot ebook: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520887 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520887 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215 I suggest delving into a subject that interests you, but that isn't too difficult for you to both understand, and make a contribution to; e.g. focusing on cryptography itself would be a bad choice, but maybe you have a novel idea about how to use crypto in a P2P application. You can then apply your domain-specific knowledge in order to implement your idea faster and better.