How do you deal with competition before launching a product?
Siddhesh Lokare
10 replies
What do you do when you plot an amazing startup idea and you realize there already is a competitor?
Replies
Anupama Panchal
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If the opportunity is good, you will always find competition. If you haven't found it till, you will in few weeks. You can't avoid them, the only way is to become better and capture market faster.
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YC Application Optimizer
Imho you can ignore that. At the beginning (pre-seed/seed) there are 1mio reasons that can kill your startup (the death rates in the first phases are very high). Competition must not be overrated at the beginning, because usually if your market consists of several 100k customers, there is usually a lot of market/space and you should focus on getting your first 100-1000 customers. Beyond that point competition might one day become relevant.
get in touch, awareness,competition, saturation, Loyalty, Longevity, Marketing Mismatch, Pre-order Priming, Establishing Critical Audiences, Review Aggregation, A/B Testing and many more.
Intern List
sometimes when arent competitors is because the soluction no have market
before launching, it's best to measure competition in terms of whether they're stopping potential customers from seeking alternative solutions or not. If nobody will leave their current solution or see a big enough difference between your option and theirs, then it doesn't matter how great your product is. It's kind of like trying to date in a community of faithfully married people versus going to a dating event filled with single and ready to mingle people.
After you launch, if you get copycats, you should've ideally found a niche of customers that you can serve better than them. Competition post-launch from copycats is generally only done by big companies who by their very nature have to be more generic than your startup. Stay nimble and super please your customers in ways that a generic approach cannot and you'll be fine.
Get laser focused on your differentiators, there is always an angle to exploit. Examine their marketing efforts for channels they aren't active/weak in. Read their reviews to determine customer needs/wants you can leverage. Conquest with paid when you have to.