4 ms·
Supercomputer Porn - Letting your competitors do your market research for you
- varikin 17y agoThis reminds me about what I once heard about McDonalds and Burger King. McDonalds was spend millions in finding the perfect spot for a new location. Burger King would then open one up across the street. I don't know how true this is, but a good little tidbit of possibly true knowledge.
- JoelSutherland 17y agoWe spend far too much time trying to learn from market leaders. Places 2-n would be a great success for many of us and often different strategies are more effective when this is your goal. This is why I am never upset to see something stupid/controversial from 37Signals make the rounds. If nothing else they are a rare voice from a company that is aiming for midsize.
- ovi256 17y agoPlaces 2-n would be a great success for many of us But there are markets where natural monopolies are ... natural. What that means is that the winner will eat all the pie, and it will be difficult to survive, nevertheless prosper, as number 2. The desktop OS market comes to mind. There isn't and there will never be a second place commercial OS. The market is structured like that. Note that Mac OS, even if superficially a desktop OS, is actually in a different market segment, where it is actually well protected and the segment leader. Conflating it with Windows is based on technological similarity, not market similarity.
- JoelSutherland 17y agoHackers spend WAY too much time worrying about the desktop OS market specifically.
- jrwoodruff 17y agoI'm pretty sure this is true of wal-mart. Where ever wal-mart builds a store, it doesn't take long for an Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday's or some other family-type chain restaurant to go in.
- nobody_nowhere 17y agoI spent the next few days building a table with three columns: markets, applications, key customers +1. Critical exercise for anyone reading HN and thinking about starting/joining/improving a startup.
- notaddicted 17y agoMake that +2, it is very sensible. You need to understand the current offerings to understand where the gaps are.
- biohacker42 17y agoI just realized why I like Steve Blank's writing so much. It's because he writes about sales and marketing as if it were engineering. And I have a feeling it's not just how he writes about it, but also how he approaches it.
- nobody_nowhere 17y agoWell said. Engineers shouldn't be afraid of sales or marketing, and can often do it as well or better than "business types". Treating it as a separate world sets up an unhealthy dynamic.
- rgrieselhuber 17y agoIn my experience, this dynamic is more often than not created by the "business types" who tend to think that if you can do engineering, you can't do sales & marketing. But I agree, the engineers who can do it are often many times more effective than those without an engineering background. It all depends on the person.
- gaius 17y agotend to think that if you can do engineering, you can't do sales & marketing. No, they know you can and are protecting their turf. That's a warning sign that they aren't very good at what they do. Just as an engineer who blindly disparages marketing is foolish - without those guys being on the ball your chances of getting paid goes way down.
- icey 17y agoThis is the first I've really heard about him. I see he has a book for sale; have you read it? Is it worth buying?
- bhousel 17y agoI got the book at the recommendation of someone else on HN. It's really good. Basically, his idea is that the traditional product development process doesn't work well for startup companies. He advocates a customer development process where you continuously evaluate your market, instead of just building something and burning through money before you realize there's nobody to buy your product.