Ask IH: How to work on ideas that are too popular?

There are two things to address here - [A] is market saturation and [B] is competing against giants.

Both are possible, but there are a few points to keep in mind:

Looking at [A] positively, it could also mean that there's demand and that the cake is big enough for everyone. If you want to join in you need to be differentiated, research the competition thoroughly, and make sure you do something unique that also covers the basics. You should especially prepare to have a strong marketing effort.

As for [B], there are many examples of small teams that took on huge companies successfully. Large organizations are risk-averse and that sometimes means we guys can take a shot. Usually that would mean targeting a narrow, focused, niche. Just an example - Google builds Docs, but it would not build something like Scrivener although you could say it's an alternative product.

In general, I would start by answering these questions:

• What needs you think are unserved by the current offering
• Whether you can serve these needs
• Whether you'll do it well enough to divert clients from the competition

Good luck!

I'm in similar spot but in a "read-it-later"/bookmarks apps market. I use Pocket a lot and there are some things that annoys me in it on a regular basis. I decided to build simple web app that fix these issues and synchronises with Pocket. I do it for myself, so text only design. In best case scenario other people will use it as well, in worse case I'll have my Pocket issues fixed :).

In 2009 I built a to-do app for iOS, the competition was fierce event then. I managed to make a little money from it, but after a year it was dead.

In 2016 I built a notes app that was in a specific niche (notes for recurring events). It is free, but I don't think it passed a 100 downloads to this day.

From my experience notes/to-do/budget app marketplace is oversaturated, and you will probably get 0 press coverage unless you have some revolutionary features or an interesting story to tell.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you should build a product, not a feature. If you try to build YNAB+feature, you will lose in the long run since it's easier for them to add a feature than it is for you to recreate their product.

Hope this helps a bit, good luck!

Even the biggest companies have gaps. For some it just may be the size. This can result in poor or multi tiered customer service. While the product is very general in nature some industries will require special requests or needs. That may be the route. The other is to appear that it is designed for a specific niche. For example 1099 sales people or Uber Drivers. (I know the same) You could market it as a tool for CPA input where they may require a specific format to make their lives easier.

If you are questioning your ability to compete with incumbents then really, don't do it. There's 1000 ideas. Choose your battle wisely, if you got an angle of attack that can truly break into the field in a way never thought of before.

I always tell people to work backwards. What is your target revenue?

If it is $10k/month, then, how many customers will you need and at what price point do you think the market can bear for your product?

For example, do you believe you can sell to 200 people at $50/month? Perhaps you can sell to 1000 people at $10 month?

It all depends on the size of the market and what price point you believe you can sell at.

For example if it is a consumer market with millions of users then the price point is usually in the $5+/month range. If you only need 1,000 to 2,000 customers, in a huge market to hit your targets, that is doable.

Let's say your market is B2B then you can start charging more. If there is, let's say, 250k possible customers in a market and you need 200x$50 customers to hit your goal... then I would say that is doable.

But, if your market is a niche market with only 10k possible customers then it would be much harder to get 200 customers at $50 especially if there are already market leaders.

Hope this helps!

Hey Mistredo! I've been working on something similar called Budgetwise, and even though there are lots of options out there, I think the market is large enough to allow for multiple competitors. As it stands, there aren't really any direct competitors to YNAB, and Mint has millions of users (most of which have never heard of YNAB before), so the opportunity is out there.

Anyway, if you have any questions let me know. I am about to launch my app in a few months and will keep you posted on how it goes.

The answer might be right there in the question!

Why do you want to build an app to manage expenses and budgets? What is it about the existing options that leaves you dissatisfied enough to want to make your own app? Focus on that, and you'll likely find a gap in the market that others are at least willing to pay for, which is a much smaller investment than building their own solution.

In this kind of situation you have to focus on how what you're building is different from what's out there already. Spend all your time and energy building that features, and talking about that (blog, etc).

Google entered the search game late, with a very crowded field providing search results, but they had a magical new PageRank algorithm to make search results better.

How is what you're building going to be different from what's out there already, why should someone take a chance on your product instead of using the products from much more established companies already available?

If you don't have enough of a differentiator to persuade people to take a chance on converting, then yeah it's going to be tough :)

Hey! How can I contact you in regards to this? I want to build the exact same thing because of my issues with YNAB, Mint, Everydollar, PersonalCapitol, etc.

Firstly you need to ask the question - why do you want to build an app to manage expenses and budgets?

Just for fun? Then no worries about competition.

There is something you lack in existing solutions? It will be the answer in your's post question. You should not beat big players, you have to solve your own problem, and, trust me, there are quite a bunch of people having the same problem.

The way I think about it, you either have to solve a problem, or enhance and/or improve an existing solution.

It sounds like you are not that confident, whether such a project even makes sense.

Also, given that you are hesitating, it might be an indicator that you might not be passionate about the project and/or the solution it provides.

Let me know where you stand , I might be misuderstanding and we can brainstorm further.

Hi there! Seems I'm in the same situation as you are :) Can replace the app topic and leave all the rest of the story quite same

I've got an app idea in this same niche on the back burner right now, for similar reasons. When I'm thinking about reasons to do this and why I can compete, I always come back to the fact that it would solve a problem for me that none of the other platforms do and there are very likely many others that would benefit from entering a micro-niche of this genre.

My best suggestion is to figure out WHO this is for, very specifically, what pain are you solving that no one else is solving, and solve that pain very explicitly. Don't seek to compete with the bigger players, instead seek to address an audience they're too big to care about. You can always expand into a bigger audience later if that makes sense. Or perhaps you'll find your audience is big enough for your purposes and needs.

The upside is that if you build something great that delivers a lot of value to users, you'll have a higher chance of getting acquired (e.g. Mint).

I think you need to start with a really clear idea of what your target market is and how you can solve their problem better than anyone else.

Also, if your product needs to be integrated with lots of major financial institutions in order to be valuable, you're going to spend a lot of resources making that happen.

If your differentiating factors are not strong enough and not something you can build on your own, why not suggest those features to incumbent projects and choose something else to work on?

I think unless your points of difference are small, core things you can build right away, your risks are too high.

No idea is too popular. You need to differentiate. There are two ways to do so.

You can differentiate on the market. Could you take YNAB's market and pick one niche inside it? And all your marketing copy speaks to that niche and their problems? All your customer testimonials are in that niche. The verbiage in the app use that's market's verbiage. You build features specific to that niche.

You can differentiate on the product. Could you take YNAB's product simplify it and introduce it on a new platform? Via Facebook Messenger and a ChatBot? Via an Alexa voice app? Changing the platform of delivery also allows you to differentiate.

If you do one of these things, then all of sudden you aren't competing with YNAB. Right? You've actually identified a set of needs that could be met better by your solution.

Remember while there are many competitors there are also new customers always. On consumer side, kids become adults always and they will look for a tool. On B2B, new businesses open daily.

Don’t try to steal existing share. Try to be a good/the best for people entering the market. These people don’t care about who has been around longest.

UI and UX can be big differentiators for these customers. Your features may be the same as most, but you can still implement them better for your customers

I considered implementing a CRM and invoice editor, and found out that there are already plenty for Free. Competing with free is very hard. Supposing I could implementing something more attractive, margins would be very thin. This is why I dropped that idea.

You have to see if you can undercut the existing offer. As a indie developer you have two big advantages: 1. you are agile, 2. you start from scratch.

The former allows to more efficiently track and stick to users needs at the condition you do the tracking of the feedback. The later means you don't have the depth of old code and users to support.

However you should still look for profitability because this what will give you the leverage to grow.

This said, it is hard to tell you what you should do. There were many search engines when google started, and there were alternates solutions to dropbox. It's the execution that matters. But I'm still trying to figure out what it means. ;)